


In the Blood

by escapemethods



Category: Halloween (2018), Halloween Movies - All Media Types
Genre: (for the most part), Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Kidnapping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2020-06-02 15:52:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19444657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escapemethods/pseuds/escapemethods
Summary: Allyson Strode finds herself at the mercy of the boogeyman she never believed in.





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> Here's an idea that's been bugging me for ages. It won't be a long fic, and it solely follows the timeline of the new film, but will contain nods and references to the other sequels and novelizations and comics.
> 
> Please note that I diverge from canon by completely negating Ray Nelson, Allyson's father and Karen's husband, from the film. He's my least favorite part of the film and his presence added nothing beyond cheap comic relief. Taking him away and leaving Karen as a single mother only strengthens the theme of intergenerational trauma and the focus on the bond between the three Strode generations. Just keep this change in mind while navigating this story.
> 
> Anyhow, happy reading!

**I.**

* * *

"I prayed that he would burn in hell, but in my heart, I knew that hell would not have him." - Dr. Samuel Loomis, _Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers_

* * *

Allyson Strode has dreamed of the boogeyman as long as she can remember.

For a long time, his appearance differs in each of the dreams-sometimes he has green skin and red eyes, sometimes he looks like a clown. He never looks the same, not until she hits second grade and the kids at school paint a visceral picture.

Chowing down on some peanut butter and jelly with Vicky at her side-Vicky has always been there, as long as she can remember and even longer than that-Cameron Elam and a few of his friends approach their long wooden table to sit with them. Even at that age, it makes her uncomfortable, all the attention and talking to anyone.

"My dad told me it's been thirty years to this day."

"What?" Vicky asks, proving to be her social crutch at the ripe age of seven.

Cameron speaks between bites of public school chicken nuggets, noisy and loud as always.

"Since the Boogeyman killed all of those people. My dad saw him, y'know. He survived. A lot of others didn't."

Allyson frowns, but says nothing, face burning hot when Cameron's gaze flicks to hers. She looks away from him purposely, at the glowing Snapple vending machines adjacent to the table.

"Your uncle-that was your uncle. The boogeyman! Your uncle's the boogeyman! Laurie Strode's your grandma, so that makes him our uncle!"

"Leave her alone, Cameron!" Vicky exclaims as Allyson gawks at him. "There's no such thing! And even if there was, he's not related to Allyson."

Allyson's grateful for the defense, even if she feels like she's bordering on tears and she doesn't know why. Cameron scoffs while one of his friends snickers at the look on her face.

"That's just not true," Cameron argues, looking intently at Allyson. "My dad told me and he knows the boogeyman! Anyone will tell you, too. Your uncle's the boogeyman."

When Allyson starts to visibly get upset-lips quivering and sniffling loudly-one of the lunch monitors approaches the table.

"What's going on here?" she asks, a lunch container in hand.

Vicky points at Cameron accusingly, which earns an indignant reaction from the boy.

"Cameron was telling Allyson her uncle's the boogeyman and he's making her cry!"

The lunch monitor sighs, clearly annoyed at having been deterred from her lunch.

"The two of you, come with me to the office. We'll have to sort this out with the principal. Come on, then."

Tears still stream down Allyson's cheeks when she chucks the remnants of her lunch in the trash and carries her Backyardigans lunchbox all the way to the principal's office, where she and Cameron sit awkwardly alongside each other until the principal retrieves them to talk it over. It ends in a quiet, shifty apology from Cameron and Allyson nodding and accepting it through tears.

That day, Karen picks her up instead of her babysitter, always tense like she is every Halloween. Allyson runs up to her to wrap her arms around her waist, at face-level to her navel, where she peers up under layers of chestnut hair that shines rich in the sunlight. Karen smiles down at her daughter, pushing her hair past her face to cup her cheeks and kiss her on the head.

"How was your day today?" Karen asks when she pulls back, holding Allyson's backpack in one hand and her slender hand in the other. Kids in costumes run by them on the sidewalk, laughing and chattering and ready to start early on their night of trick-or-treating. A part of Allyson envies them-the other part of her understands, even at that young age, that a primal fear keeps the two of them mostly indoors whenever October 31st rolls around. Karen doesn't even like to say the word Halloween in their house.

Allyson shrugs, avoiding eye contact with her mother at all costs.

Karen frowns, knowing.

"Does this have to do with the call I got today?"

The girl tenses. "-I didn't do anything, mom, it was Cameron Elam. He was making fun of me."

"I heard about that. I'm not mad at you."

The rigidness between Allyson's shoulders relaxes a little and she goes on, quickly, "Cameron did apologize to me, mom. He feels bad. But I have questions."

"Do you?"

Allyson gets a little more hushed when they reach the car, looking around for passersby, then back up at her mother as she remotely unlocks the van.

It's when Karen's got her scooped into the backseat of the van and Karen's driving away that Allyson starts asking away.

"Mom, is the boogeyman real?"

Karen sighs. This had been inevitable-the last name that they bear leads to too many questions. She'd hoped that Allyson wouldn't have to bear the same brunt that she had, but Haddonfield remembers everything, even thirty years after Michael Myers had attacked her mother.

And her mother-her mother believes in the boogeyman more than anyone, more than any superstitious and paranoid child high off the thrill of late-night scary stories. Laurie Strode knows the boogeyman-at least, Karen had been convinced of that for a long time and maybe, she trips up about it sometimes, that belief.

Ultimately, Karen says, "no, he's not."

"Then who hurt grandmother so badly?"

"A bad man. A really bad man. But he's not the boogeyman. He's just a person, just like you and I."

"Is he still around?"

"It's-been a long time, and he's been locked away to be punished for all of that time. He'll never see the light of day again, sweetheart, so there's no need to worry."

Karen's relieved that comforts Allyson, at least, as the girl busies herself looking at the windows, at the colored trees that pass as they drive down side roads toward their house. Finally, Karen pulls into the driveway and helps her out of the back and up the steps, where they sit at the dining room table to look at today's homework.

As Karen warms up the oven to make a batch of brownies right from the box, Allyson clears her throat as she peers into the kitchen.

"What does he look like? What's his name?"

"Who?" Karen asks, brow furrowing as she mixes egg into the batter.

"The boogeyman."

"His name is Michael," Karen says with a sigh, "and what does it matter what he looked like? He's long gone now."

"Please," Allyson begs, "can you please just tell me? I want to know."

"Why?"

"Because!"

Karen sighs, knowing that if Allyson doesn't get it from her that she'll get it from someone else, and she'd rather say it herself.

"He wore a white mask. Like a Halloween costume. But he doesn't now. He just looks like a normal guy."

"Oh," Allyson's brow furrows, and, sharp enough even at seven, she says, "is that why grandmother hates Halloween?"

Karen nods after a moment. "Yeah. Yeah, it is."

"Okay."

Relieved that Allyson seems to drop it, Karen works on greasing a pan to pour the batter inside, setting a timer after placing the pan in the oven. Sliding off the bright blue oven mitts that match the rest of their small kitchen, Karen approaches Allyson at the dining room table who sits with her cheek on her knuckle and a pencil eraser between her teeth.

When she sees her mother, she sighs.

"So the boogeyman comes on Halloween, right?"

"His name is Michael. The boogeyman isn't real," Karen urges her, bending to be at eye-level with her daughter. "And baby, he's never coming back. I'll always be here to protect you."

That earns a smile.

"You promise?" Allyson asks. Karen smiles wider, leaning in to kiss her on the temple.

"I promise. Nothing will ever happen to you with me around."

That satisfies her enough, earning a hug. Karen laughs, wrapping her arms around Allyson in return to hold her close, kissing her atop her dark, sleek mane of hair.

* * *

"She looks like her."

Dr. Ranbir Sartain radiates far more smugness than usual, a smirk curling at the corners of his mouth. Michael's eyes don't move from the wall behind Sartain's head and his face remains as blank as ever, half-basked in the shadows of his cell around them. As clean and stark white as it is, there's no windows and the lighting is poor, especially this far in the belly of Smith's Grove, where Michael Myers had been stowed away to live out the rest of his days in comfortable anonymity and squalor while the world around them forgot and moved on. For the past forty years, it's worked well for most of them.

Dr. Sartain hadn't forgotten-he could never forget.

"She looks like her, Michael," Dr. Sartain says louder, as if Michael hadn't heard him before but knowing he had. Michael still doesn't look at him, not even when he sets down the printed pictures of Allyson Strode he'd taken from the Haddonfield Gazette, posed in her track and field gear with a first place trophy nearly as tall as her. With her dark hair and pinched nose and hazel eyes, she's a spitting image of Judith Myers-and just the right age, too.

"Judith."

It's the magic word-Michael looks at Sartain for a long moment, then at the photograph. It's fleeting, and he looks back at the wall ahead as quickly as he looked away. But Sartain knows better.

"She's a mirror image, isn't she? And she just turned seventeen," Sartain's nearly humming, now, "that's Laurie Strode's granddaughter. What a coincidence, isn't it?"

Michael doesn't acknowledge the statement. He knows better than to expect Michael to acknowledge much else today, now that he'd gotten such a lively reaction from him. It's promising.

He digs out his worn composition notebook, where he leaves all of Michael's notes in their weekly private sessions together, and a ballpoint pen from his briefcase.

"I just thought it was interesting, that's all, the resemblance, and what she means to you."

It's almost laughable, the presumption the doctor makes about Michael, but he abides by them because his use hasn't run out. He's never quite been able to maintain such a pull over anyone before-perhaps as a child, when his baby face could impossibly charm the doctors and nurse.

All except one, anyway.

He blinks once as Sartain's voice starts to become farther and farther away, and allows his gaze to flick once more to the girl's face that smiles brightly back at him. He looks, for a long moment, and then looks back up at the off-white wall ahead, ignoring Sartain as he always does.

* * *

Four years of track meets, and Allyson doesn't think she's ever been so exhausted.

It's nearly midnight, and the moon shines so bright it illuminates the road ahead even with little streetlights on the paved path. The metallic smell of blood goes right up her nose. It's all she can smell, with Laurie bleeding steadily from a wound in her gut that makes Allyson a little sick whenever she looks at it. Allyson's knee aches and her head pounds with white-hot pain that makes her dizzy, but more than all of that-she's alive. She, her mother, and grandmother are all alive. They're cold and sore and bleeding, but they're alive.

Allyson can say that, at least, unlike Oscar and Dave and Vicky. She swallows at the thought, at the brief rundown she'd gotten of the night's events from Hawkins and at the memory of Oscar's body, impaled on the wrought iron fence. Her body wracks in shivers at the memory of that mask, of those eyes staring into her in the cramped backseat of that police cruiser and then from the gated confines of Laurie's basement, as if he could see past her eyes and into her soul.

She doesn't know what it means. Doesn't know why he hadn't killed her, like he had anyone else in his path, when she knows he had so many opportunities to do it. She knows it's the same thinking that drove grandmother out of her head these past forty years. The idea of living with this for forty years is unbearable, suddenly, and her gaze shifts to Laurie beside her, whose eyes have since fallen shut on the ride back.

Allyson understands, suddenly, understands it all.

Dark eyes flick from Laurie to the blade in her hand, where she's covered in his blood. Michael's blood.

She can't let it go, though, even as her hand shakes around the handle, all of the sureness of earlier tonight gone and leaving her exhausted.

The truck pulls into a 7-Eleven parking lot, poorly and dimly lit with few cars parked in the lot. When the driver's door opens, his weight makes the whole car creak.

"I'm going to go inside to call for some help, okay?" the driver says from Karen's side, nodding toward Laurie, "she doesn't look too good and the nearest hospital isn't for awhile. Better to get an ambulance now."

Karen and Allyson nod. The driver's keys jingle as he backs off toward the entrance.

"You sit tight, okay?"

As her gaze goes unfocused at the lines of trees ahead, she feels a squeeze on her shoulder, where her mother's lithe hand finds her. Karen smiles at her wearily, and Allyson manages one back.

"Are you okay?" Karen asks softly, careful not to wake Laurie. Allyson shrugs.

"I-I don't know, mom," Allyson answers truthfully. "I don't know."

"That's okay, sweetheart," Karen says, "the three of us, we have each other. That's what matters. I'm so glad you're okay. I was so worried."

"I'm okay, mom," Allyson says softly, setting her hand on Karen's shoulder when she begins to sniffle. "I'm all in one piece. Some of my friends-they can't-"

She can't finish. Karen nods, rubbing over her shoulder in return, understanding.

"I know. And I'm sorry," Karen says, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry I couldn't protect you-"

"That's not your fault and you know it," Allyson says, firm. "I know it. I'm just happy we're with each other now."

"And he's dead."

Allyson remembers the way he'd stared up at her from the basement, the way fire touched and scorched every surface therein besides him.

He hadn't burned.

"Yeah," Allyson says, sighing. "He's dead."

Maybe if she says it enough times, she'll believe it.

The two of them sit in silence together for a few moments, while Laurie occasionally stirs beside them. Karen runs her fingers through Laurie's white curls, gentle and affectionate, earning a few murmurs from Laurie herself in her state of half-consciousness. Allyson's gaze flicks back to the trees on the road ahead, the stark white glow of the moon above, and she sighs out a huff of cold air.

It's so quiet, she can hear a katydid whistle nearby, coyotes howl in the woods, the sound of blood trickling onto the truck bed, soaking her. Laurie wheezing. She closes her eyes.

When she opens them, there's an arm around her waist, pulling her haphazardly off the side of the truck bed.

She screams.

"No!" Karen screams, scrambling to wrench herself from Laurie's grasp to follow as Allyson thrashes ungracefully in a vice grip around her lithe waist. Laurie's eyes widen in shock as she holds her arms out for them, too, unable to speak as Karen screams. "No! Michael! Stop! Let her go!"

Michael backs away as Allyson kicks wildly at him, weakened from the soreness in her knee that turns into a sharp pain when she moves it the wrong way, feels and hears her her ACL tear again as she screams in agony. Blunt nails dig into a charred hand as the blood-soaked knife drops to asphalt.

He backs away, off into the forest, as Karen scrambles out of the truck bed and onto the parking lot ground to follow them. Allyson cries as she tries to fumble out of his grasp, breathless from shock and terror, as Karen's screams decrescendo as they move further into the forest.

Shock makes her vision go spotty, then white, as Karen looks through the forest for them to no avail. The woman screams in anguish, collapsing into wet dirt, as sirens wail in the distance.

* * *

When Allyson awakens, she coughs dust out of her lungs and moans in pain at her knee, rolling from her stomach onto her back. Her eyes sting from dryness as she peels her eyelids open, facing a dark ceiling. Light pours in from boarded windows, yellow and rich, and she moves to stand.

It only serves to make her dizzy, and she falls into the window. Her nails, caked brown with dried blood, dig into the wood as she tries to rip the planks off the windows. She grunts in frustration when she can't, beelining immediately for the door beside the bed, but can't open that either, the knob locked in its place.

The only other space to hide is under the bed and the open space of the closet, where its door seems to have been ripped off its hinges. Allyson ambles toward the closet, finding only dusty clothes and old toys. She doesn't dare touch them, scared of whatever other creature may be inside, and looks through the nightstand drawers to investigate.

In the first drawer sits a dusty pocket bible and, beneath it, is an inscription. She squints to read it better-finding CHARLIE & BETTIE carved with a heart around it. Her brow furrows, setting the Bible back on top of it before trying to tug open the lower drawer, finding it locked.

She tugs harder, only serving to hurt the skin of her palms while the drawer doesn't budge. Her heart pounds as she lets up, feeling herself teeter close to hyperventilating.

"I'm going to die here," she whispers, thinking of all the kidnappings on the news, thinking of the stories of a pretty young girl being kept and chained in a room for years, decades, without anyone having a hint of where to look-and that was only the seldom, fortunate few. She feels tears stream down her cheeks at the memory of her mother screaming for her, the anguished sound echoing in the night, and fear pangs at her gut at the memory of the grip around her, dragging her off here.

She curls up on the bed, as close to the fetal position as she can manage because of her smarting knee, and closes her eyes as she cries.

She remembers the feel of grandmother's rough fingers on her cheek, wiping away sticky strawberry ice cream. Grandmother always loved strawberry ice cream.

"That's better," Laurie had said. Allyson beamed up at her, licking at her ice cream cone as she squinted at Laurie, with her graying hair bright from the lemon yellow sun behind her head.

Allyson swallowed, nervous. The visits with grandmother were sparse, always sparse, but more commonplace as Karen got busier and busier with work and school thereafter. Someone had to pick Allyson up after school, and as tense as Karen was around Laurie-Allyson's always known there was something off between them, not like her other friends' mothers and grandmothers-she was cheaper than a babysitter. Besides, Laurie's always seemed to have a much better grasp at being a grandmother than a grandmother, and Allyson had always been so afraid to ruin whatever precarious balance that was there.

That day, though, it was Halloween. Allyson was nine, fresh from a day of fourth grade, and she was fearless.

Laurie sighed.

"What's the matter, baby?" Laurie asked.

"Is he real?"

"Who?"

"The boogeyman," Allyson asked, quickly going on. "Mom told me he isn't. But the kids at school-"

"Kids are cruel, Allyson," Laurie said, carefully, coarse fingers touching over her chestnut hair. Laurie's fingers had always felt like sandpaper on her skin, rough and weathered from so many years of fighting, of working. She never ran. They didn't sit in the garden because Laurie had sacrificed it for a shooting range, as Allyson would later find out, just like she sacrificed so many things. "And, the boogeyman will never hurt you. Ever."

"So, he _is_ real?"

Laurie was quiet. Allyson reached to touch one of her hands with both of hers after setting the ice cream aside, holding it in her own.

"I'll always protect you, Allyson. Always."

Laurie had sounded terrified, hoarse and choked. Allyson swallowed, kissing Laurie's cheek and earning a tight, firm hug in return, unable to help but feel like she was the one holding her grandmother instead of the other way around.

She spoke into Laurie's gray hair as the woman trembled fiercely, "I'll always protect you too, grandmother."

Allyson's eyes open, finding a shape staring down at her, its face stark white. Like so many nightmares she's head, she expects to blink her eyes and expects it gone, like the specter it is.

When she blinks, the shape doesn't go away, and Allyson quickly moves to sit up,crowding herself against the headboard and groaning in pain as her knee protests sharply in pain at the movement. She feels herself shake in fear as the floorboards creak with his movements toward her.

"What do you want?" she hears herself ask, hoarse and dry, realizing it must have been some time since she last had a drink-not since the party. She doesn't know how long it's been since she's been here, but even as she trembles in fear, she registers pangs of hunger and thirst that makes her throat dry up.

Of course, Michael doesn't answer. Allyson swallows the lump in her throat.

"Where are we?" she asks.

Nothing.

He holds out his hand, causing her to flinch until she makes out the brown bag there and a water bottle in the low light of the room. Her hands tremble as she reaches for them, jerking back as if burned when their fingers touch. Now that her eyes have adjusted, she makes out the burns on his palms, the eyeholes of his mask and the curve of the mouth. She sighs, peering into the bag and finding a turkey sandwich, a bag of chips and grapes, and a juicebox. It must be a child's lunch, but it's the best thing she's ever tasted, devouring the sandwich and grapes in record time and washing it down with the juice.

When she twists open the water bottle, she sighs, meeting his gaze that hasn't left her.

Her other hand reaches for the bag of chips, unnerved by the silence between them, and offers them to him.

His head cocks at the sight.

"Do you-" she stumbles, "do you want some? Is that it?"

He doesn't move. She sets the bag back on the bed after a moment, biting her lower lip and remembering Vicky, how she'd always been her social crutch in any awkward situation.

And now.

Allyson swallows, chugging some of the water then setting the bottle aside on the nightstand, pushing her fingers through her hair as she feels her eyes burn. She should cry, but she doesn't, not under Michael's gaze. In any case, she doesn't think she has any tears left to cry.

"I-I don't know what it is you brought me here for," Allyson says. "I don't know why you haven't killed me. Why you didn't kill me in that police car, why you didn't kill me instead of bringing me here. I'd rather be dead than here, with you. Why not just kill me like you did to my friends?"

She doesn't expect a response and she doesn't get one.

Her lip quivers.

"Michael," she breathes. That earns a cock of his head, reminding her of a German Shepherd. She thinks it'd be endearing if it weren't so terrifying, trying to think of how old he must be. Older than grandmother.

She suddenly misses her mother and grandmother, intensely.

She shifts, gripping at her knee in pain when she does, and his gaze flicks to her knee before moving back to her.

"Y-you hear me, M-Michael," she stammers, nerves getting the best of her as she tries whatever this is out, determined to see herself through her. Her wits had helped her get out of the backseat of that cruiser and they can help her now.

All the confidence in the world doesn't dissipate her fear, however, "you didn't-you didn't kill me. There has to be a reason for that and you know it."

Michael steps back. Her heart pounds as the door slams shut, locking quickly behind him, and she ambles toward it to try to open it up to no avail. His footsteps echo before slowly fading to nothing, leaving her only with the sound of katydids whistling, owls hooting, and her own heart pounding between her ears.

"Fuck you!" she shouts after him, throwing herself against the door as she starts pounding against it with her fists. "Let me out! You can't do this to me, you can't!"

She screams, and she doesn't stop screaming until her throat goes hoarse, until it's replaced with sobs as she falls against the door into a heap on the floor against it, her knee burning as hopelessness settles upon her like an albatross over her shoulders.

* * *

"This is a fucking mess," Karen mutters, sitting beside Laurie's hospital bed, where she lies back, sedated thoroughly.

"This is a fucking mess!" Karen repeats, frustrated, standing at her full height. Her cheap Christmas sweater from earlier had been discarded by the doctors in favor of a hospital gown, garish and split open along the back, exposing her torn bra and bruises from the struggle earlier. She runs her fingers through her mussed hair, feeling herself start to hyperventilate just thinking of the last time she saw Allyson, her ears full of terror and fear as Michael took her away from her.

The one thing she promised herself she'd do better than Laurie, and she couldn't-protect Allyson, both from the ugliness her mother had exposed her to from such a young age and the boogeyman. She remembers that promise she'd made so long ago. Unfortunately, Karen hadn't realized the boogeyman was indeed real and that she was lying to her.

The doctors had relented in letting Karen out of her own room to sit beside her mother, especially as the police came in and out for statements and information about Allyson. She'd been quick to send all the press all of the pictures she needed to for the Amber Alert, including all of the pictures she'd taken of her earlier that night before she went to her dance with Cameron and Oscar, dressed up in a suit she'd had tailored with a fedora on, toothpick between her teeth.

She stares down at the pictures on her cell phone, feeling her stomach lurch looking at the girl smiling brightly back at her.

The door opens and the doctor along with the sheriff step inside. Karen immediately stands at her full height, and the doctor hands her an oversized sweatshirt and pants with the Haddonfield Memorial insignia on them. She silently nods in thanks.

"Any news on Allyson?" she asks, not quite hopeless but knowing not to get her hopes up. Sheriff Barker smiles mirthlessly.

"Nothing yet, Ms. Strode. We've put out roadblocks every two miles and there's an all points bulletin out there for her and Myers' description, too. We're-"

"You seriously think that's enough?" Karen interjects, feeling frustration well up within her, "no one took this seriously. And now-now, Allyson's gone!"

"That's what I came in to talk to you about," Sheriff Barker's face goes even more grim, "we found an officer's body on the road, who reported he was going to take Myers and Allyson into the station, along with Myers' doctor. His cruiser was found a mile outside of your mother's home, the doctor dead on the ground with Myers and Allyson's DNA all over the vehicle."

Rage quickly replaces frustration.

"So what you're saying-"

"We're saying that Myers had a chance to kill Allyson, when she was taken by Dr. Sartain with him in the back. But he didn't."

"So Allyson being kidnapped two times in one night is supposed to help me feel better!?"

"We want to give you some hope, at least-"

Karen's knees suddenly go out and she sits back down in her chair, sobs wracking her body.

"Please-just leave us alone!" she cries, face in her hands, "just leave us alone!"

The doctor and Sheriff Barker look at each other, knowing, and exit the room, leaving Karen and Laurie together. Laurie's worn hand covers one of Karen's, startling her.

"Mom?" she sniffles.

"Baby," Laurie smiles, and Karen offers a tearful smile, leaning into her touch as Laurie cups her face to wipe away the tears that fall fast and hard.

"Allyson-"

"I know," Laurie croaks, tears forming in her own eyes. Karen's only seen her mother cry a handful of times in her life like this. It makes her swallow thickly. "I know. I guess they haven't heard any news yet, right?"

"Nothing. The trail he left behind in the woods went cold after two miles. God only knows where he went and-now-my baby-she's-"

"It's not your fault," Laurie says softly, letting out a long-suffering exhale, letting the two of them know exactly who she blames: herself.

"It's not yours either, mom," Karen says quickly, "I just-if I'd listened to you-"

"I don't take any pride in being right about any of this, Karen. We can't change what's happened," Laurie wheezes, moving to take her IV out of her arm. Karen immediately stills her.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"We're leaving."

"You're not going anywhere like this!"

"Karen-"

"No," Karen stands, tucking her mother in, "where are you going in this state? You taught me what to do. You've prepared me for this. The police can't do anything-they never did, not when it came to him."

"You're right."

The two women exchange a knowing glance. Karen cups her mother's face, feeling the lines of her age in her hands, and leans in to kiss her on the head. The tears start falling again. Unlike her mother, Karen has always been more open with her emotions, has always cried more readily.

"I can't lose you," Karen says softly, looking into her mother's eyes, conviction in her stare. "I have my cell phone. I'm going to go back home and get what I need to. You call me if you need anything, okay?"

Laurie's hand on her arm stills her as she starts to get dressed.

"Sweetheart-be careful, okay?"

"I will."

"Find her."

"I will, mom," she kisses her on the head again, "I will. I love you."

"I love you too, baby. Always."

* * *

Over the past several hours, Allyson's managed to claw away a piece of wood from the window, where she can watch the world outside-she knows it's at least the next day, now, as the sun peeks over the woods and lights up the room from the sliver of daylight she's able to see. Her hands sting with splinters, blut nails completely worn down to painful, sensitive nubs-but she has a weapon she can use, at the very least, when she has the chance.

She knows that opportunity isn't now, not when Michael's guard might be up the most, but she tucks away the shard of rotten wood under the mattress so she can sit back down on the bed. Her fine hair is so matted and greasy by now that it makes her sick, dried blood crusting at the roots from where she'd hit it hard in the cruiser, and she manages to expertly braid it up without an elastic.

With her hair out of her way, she feels a little better, albeit colder. There's no ventilation in the room she inhabits and her suit jacket's long gone, leaving her to shiver on the bare mattress. The window's such a small distance from the bed that she hadn't had to stand or kneel by it to do what she had to do, and the closet's a fair distance away. Her right knee, already smarting from the cold, will only get worse if she stands on it. It feels like the surgery she'd had years ago, when she'd first torn it in her freshman year playing soccer, made no difference.

Tearing a piece of fabric from the bed, she ties up a makeshift bandage over her knee which does little to improve the inflammation, but it feels at least somewhat more stable. Tentatively, with her weight bore completely on her left side against the mattress, she stands, trying to head to the closet.

When she's forced to actually walk, she has to bite down on her lip so hard it bleeds to stop herself from screaming from the pain. Hopping awkwardly, she leans against the wall beside the closet, trying to force the door open by wiggling the locked knob. She groans in pain and frustration, barely able to feel her hands from the cold, and pushes her hands up and down her own form, an almost visible lightbulb appearing above her head when she remembers the safety pins her mother had put between two of the buttons on her shirt to keep it from opening.

Before she can fumble and find them, she hears heavy footsteps creaking up the stairs, almost physically feeling her blood run ice cold.

"No," she whispers, shaking her head as she realizes she's shaking hard, trying her hardest to stumble back to the bed, repeating the word to herself. She shakes so hard that her knee simply gives out when she tries to release the wall and she falls hard to the ground, groaning as she rolls onto her back as the door opens.

She screams when Michael advances on her, backing up with her limp leg up until her back hits the wall. He cocks his head down at her, and then lifts her up with his hands under her. She calls out as she falls back down on the bed, looking at the door behind his form, open wide. She knows she's not going to make it far with her leg and doesn't try to escape, feeling her hands shake as she tries to sit back down on the bed and pull himself to look up at him.

He holds out a bottle of water and another bag, and she furrows her brow before taking the items, wondering where he'd found this meal, too.

"Thanks," Allyson mutters, her hands shaking as she struggles to open the bag.

After watching her for a few moments, Michael takes the bag from her like she's a child, handing her the contents therein-a plastic-wrapped tuna sandwich and a box of raisins.

She laughs, startling herself with her own sardonic reaction. She seems to startle Michael too, who simply stares down at her, letting out an exhale. Ludicrously, she wonders if she humored him, too.

"Thanks," she says again, opening up the sandwich. Michael doesn't move to turn away or leave like he had last time, simply standing in the doorway, watching her. It's so quiet that all she can hear is his breathing and her own hands unwrapping the sandwich, slowly.

"I-" she wishes she weren't so socially inept, though she knows it doesn't mean much, sharing her space with a mute serial killer. The absurdity of the situation strikes her more than fear-she'd gotten over that, already.

"I, um-" she says again, trying to steel herself and her anxiety as her mother had taught her from an early age, "I know you're not going to say anything to me. I just-I wish I knew why you took me. I wish I could understand. But I know you-I know that-that doctor-he tried to understand you, too. I don't wanna be like that."

She doesn't know if she gets through to him, but he's made no move to hurt her yet.

"My mother always said my grandmother's warnings about you were bullshit. That you'd be locked away forever. I always believed my mother, not my grandmother. I wish I'd listened. When I saw you-looking at me-"

She can't even carry on, leaning back against the headboard as she groans, pulling her leg up, as she starts to eat.

"You terrify me. And I don't know what you plan on doing with me, with this-did you even have a plan when you took me?" Allyson now wishes she could quiet herself, but she's gone crazy with anxiety the past few hours, without anyone to talk to besides herself. She wishes it were her mother, or even grandmother. She shudders, thinking of whatever's in Michael's eyes when he looks at her, and then, about Oscar's dead stare looking back at her, then about David and Vicky. She hasn't quite fathomed what she's going to do without them.

Michael looks down at Allyson's knee.

"I-torn my ACL when I was fourteen," she explains, gesturing to her knee, "it's-a spot in your knee. I guess I tore it again when you took me. It makes it hard to walk. I was-I was trying to get a jacket of some sort in the closet, because it's-it's so cold in here. I wasn't trying t-to run, or anything. But I guess the closet door's locked."

He exhales once more, then, unsheathes a knife in his pocket. She holds up her hands defensively as it glints in the light.

"Wait-wait-Michael, don't-"

He stalks over to the door and, with the knife, opens the lock. He hands her a sweater he finds in the closet, clearly from decades before. Allyson takes it with trembling hands, nearly putting it on backward before it's over her, her hands nearly swimming from how oversized the sleeves are on her form. She might be tall, but she's lithe.

She reminds him of a bird.

(Such a small, pretty thing.)

"Thank you," she says, sounding grateful and surprised at the unexpected kindness, if she can even call it that. With her hair back in a braid, she looks less like Judith, though the resemblance still strikes him. He steps back, away from her, and it takes everything in her power not to beg him to stay. Her quivering lip says it all, though it doesn't faze him.

"I-" Allyson can't quite get out what she wants to say before the door closes behind him and locks. She exhales a shaky breath she hadn't realized she was holding and lies back against the stiff pillows, puffs of dust billowing out and making her cough loudly. She pushes a hand up her shirt, fingering at the safety pins between her shirt buttons. She knows it's her only chance out of here, even with the strange mercy Michael's shown her the past twenty-four hours.

Head lolling to the side, she thinks about her morning jog yesterday-it seems like so long ago, yesterday morning, but she'd woken up before the sun rose like she always did and went out for a jog. She always does it on days she doesn't have track. When she'd jogged down Lampkin Lane, she'd found news crews and cops surrounding a tree trunk. When she'd looked closer, she found a rottweiler hanging by its neck and disemboweled. It'd been more brutal than anything she'd ever seen in any science class or film and it'd taken a great amount of effort to tear her gaze away so she could return home, too sick to keep going. She hadn't been able to shake the feeling of being watched all day.

The sick realization hits her: Michael had hung the dog there like some kind of sick homecoming present, just for her. Just for her. She pushes the remnants of the tuna sandwich away from her on the bedside table and haphazardly chugs half of the water bottle, some of its content leaking over her chin and shirt. She exhales exaggeratedly, wiping at her mouth with the back of her hand.

"I'm going to die here," she says to herself softly, closing her eyes as tears threaten to fall again. All she wants to do is scream-she doesn't know if she has any fight left in her after what's happened, but she also knows that she's a Strode-she has to be made of tougher stuff than this. She can't give up.

She climbs out of bed to approach the bedroom window once more, squinting to watch as a shape retreats into the woods nearby. Her pulse picks up as she fumbles for the safety pins under her shirt, hissing in pain as it pricks her finger. She climbs over the bed to the bedroom door, where her weight falls against it, knocking over an old lamp and shattering it.

"Fuck!" she exclaims, heart pumping hard and fast as she pulls the safety pin open to start fiddling with the lock in the doorknob. She has no idea what she's doing, the memories of playing manhunt in the neighborhood backyards suddenly hitting her. She'd broken into Vicky's dad's shed, much to his chagrin, to hide away for the night. The rest of the tag team had almost forgotten about her, not expecting her to have figured out how to expertly lockpick and for such a goody-two-shoes to cheat the way she had.

So, when she hears the lock click, she's almost incredulous until she pulls the door open, slowly, cursing the way it creaks when it moves. Quickly, she ambles to find the shard of wood she hid between the mattress and boxspring. She closes the door and locks it behind her as an afterthought, starts heading down the hallway. She leans against the wall for balance and so she can grapple her way into the dark and, desperately, tries to open any of the doors down the long hallway, but finds them all locked. Finally, she reaches the staircase, where she miraculously manages to head down the flight of steps without falling or hurting herself further, even as her knee burns and aches in protest, hurting worse than it ever had when she first tore it.

Fumbling her way into what used to be the kitchen, Allyson opens up every drawer she can find until she finds a drawer of knives. Quickly, she pushes a smaller knife into her belt loop and takes a larger one in hand, shutting it with her hip to head down a small hallway. She finds a bathroom and quickly shuts and locks the door behind her, looking for anything to put in front of it but finding nothing. She considers the bathtub for a moment, but then finds a small window when she pulls back the shower curtain and knows she's barely small enough to fit through it. She lets out a sigh of relief as she climbs into the tub and then, up to the small window above. She moans in pain as she pushes herself up, not used to exercising such upper body strength especially with one of her hands holding the knife. She barely bites back a scream when she uses her right leg to push herself full out of the window.

There's at least a floor's drop to the ground below. She swallows thicky, staring back at the unmoving door and the blackness of the home behind her, and then down at the ground again. She'd always read of heroes dying noble deaths in mythology, sacrificing themselves or killing themselves to ensure their fate was in their own hands, not those of a force much crueller. The train of thought seems dramatic, but she can't help her mind going there-she knows she'd much rather this than whatever it is Michael has in store for her, especially considering there's a possibility she could just get right back up.

"Oh, you're so stupid-you're so fucking stupid," she mutters to herself as she holds onto the edge of the windowsill, moaning in pain as she pulls her bad leg up over the threshold. The cold air hitting her skin feels like giving birth and she closes her eyes against the gusts of chilled wind for just a moment.

Then, Allyson lets go, trying not to shriek as she careens to the ground below.

A patch of dead leaves seems to break her fall, though she still hits her head hard. When she tries to move her neck from where she lies on her stomach, she's rewarded with a piercing pain from the top of her head that seems to radiate down to her toes, followed by residual dizziness. The only way she knows she didn't break her neck is because she can move her arms and legs, though she's too weak to do much with it.

Feeling tears stream down her cheeks followed by something else that's warm-she realizes she can taste her own blood, streaming from her broken nose into her mouth, whatever cuts she had from the broken glass from the police cruiser freshly reopened and allowing blood to seep from her scalp, coating her hair with it. Moaning in pain, she coughs blood out of her mouth, breathing hard as she tries not to hyperventilate, simply relieved to be alive. Unable to see with the spots clouding her vision, she reaches out for the handle of the knife, hands shaking uncontrollably, and she's barely able to push herself to where it'd fallen from her hand on the way down before she sinks to the ground, lightheadedness overcoming her as her world slowly goes black and her grip on the knife's handle goes limp.

Then she sees nothing, her own blood oozing out onto the leaves around her.

* * *

Karen arrives at the Old Myers House at noon, hyped up on coffee and still having not slept a wink since the night before. She pulls up in her Cadillac, finding cop cars and a news van stationed in front of the curb. Exhaling softly, she steps out, trying in vain to shield her face from the press nearby as she approaches Sheriff Barker.

"Ms. Strode!" he exclaims in surprise. A few nearby officers push reporters away as the two of them duck away, safe behind a police barricade. As an extra measure, Karen shoves her hood over her head, ignoring the flashing of cameras and barking questions.

"You should be at the hospital!"

"I need to be right here," she insists, "can we go inside?"

He looks around, warily, then exhales a long sigh of surrender, gesturing for her to go up the steps before him. She steps inside of the old house-not so _old_ anymore, considering it's been remodeled, its exterior even repainted to a pale blue. It barely looks like the house that'd haunted her her entire life. She sighs, looking around at the interior, knowing she'd expected it to be garish and visibly tainted. Instead, it merely looks much like her own home.

"The new owners left for an impromptu vacation and were kind enough to allow us access."

Karen spots a high school graduate's portrait nearby, exhaling a breath she hadn't realized she was holding, then looks back at Barker.

"Do you think he's going to come back here?" she asks.

"I doubt it."

"But-this is where he killed his sister-"

"We know that, but he must know we're here, waiting for him. But we'll keep an eye out for the next few days, just in case."

"Just in case!?" she asks, feeling hysterical, "my daughter-he took my daughter! This is the least you could do."

Sheriff Barker looks around, feeling suddenly uncomfortable with Karen's aggression, especially with the way her eyes are so bloodshot and swollen that he knows she's been crying all night. She looks crazed.

"Ms. Strode," he says, then, softer, with a hand on her shoulder, "Karen. We're doing everything we can, here. I think what you need is something to eat and a good night's sleep. You've had such a long night. We've kept some officers posted at your door. We'll have a few more escort you home."

He waves over a few officers who stand by the mantle.

"You don't understand-that's my daughter. I can't rest and I can't sleep without knowing she's safe," Karen stresses, sounding and feeling steadily more helpless. She feels tears well up in her eyes for the umpteenth time in the past several hours, sniffing harshly as she wipes back tears. Barker's hand tightens on her shoulder, squeezing consolingly.

"I can't imagine how you feel, Karen," he admits, "I can't even begin to imagine. But what I do know is that you'll be of more use to yourself and to your daughter if you're well-rested-you know, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed?" That earns a laugh through a hiccup as she nods, and he continues, feeling encouraged, "you're a determined woman. And you could stop him yourself, if you put your mind to it. Your mother's the same way too, from what I've seen and heard of her. You go on home and I'll talk to you later, okay?"

Barker and the officers exchange a knowing glance before they escort Karen out of the old house and to their cruiser.

"Wait-my car-"

"If you give your car keys to us, we can take it home for you. Let us drive you home, Ms. Strode, we insist."

After a moment, she exhales and nods, not wanting to sound too much like her mother, and hands her black remote starter to one of the officers, who approaches her car and turns it on. The other officer, older and more kind looking, guides her to the passenger seat of his cruiser with a hand over the small of her back, hiding her face from the reporters behind the police barrier. Never has Karen been more grateful for tinted windows than when she's inside the police cruiser

"You're one hell of a lady, ma'am," he says when he slips in the driver's seat, "my name is Ben Meeker, by the way."

"Thank you," she says, sniffling as Meeker starts the car, and then takes off down the street with the sirens on, the officer driving her car following closely behind. "I just want to find her. I want her back."

"I've got a daughter of my own a few years younger than Allyson," Meeker admits, "I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to her. I promise you, I'll personally do anything in my power to find her and bring her back safely."

"Me too," Karen says, offering a smile that doesn't quite reach her eyes, wiping away the tears that fall. When they reach her house a few blocks away, she opens the door, fishing for her keys in her pocket to open the front door.

"Do you mind if we come in, ma'am?" Meeker asks.

Karen props the door open to allow him and a much younger officer inside.

"Do you-would you like some coffee or something else to drink?"

"That's alright," Meeker says, looking at pictures of Allyson and Karen that line the mantle-mostly Allyson. There's a picture of a very young Allyson running away from a wave at the beach, another picture of Allyson and Karen on what looks to be Allyson's first day of school, and then, of Allyson holding a huge trophy in her arms covered in sweat. Meeker smiles, glancing at Karen as she steps into the room.

"She's beautiful," Meeker offers.

"Yeah, she is," Karen says with a sigh, offering a sheepish smile. "I'm going to go upstairs and shower and take a nap, okay? My mom-I have my home number as her emergency contact, so-you can just wake me up if the hospital calls, okay?"

Meeker nods, ushering her upstairs.

"We'll take care of it. Go. If anything happens, I'll come for you."

Karen nods, feeling sufficiently comforted as she goes upstairs, immediately heading for her bedroom and her shower inside, where she strips and turns the water to the hottest setting and steps under. She wants to cry but doesn't have it in her, not anymore, so she simply scrubs all the dirt, grit, and blood off her skin and steps out in her robe, lying down in her bed as she stares at the ceiling.

Pushing her hand between her mattress and bedframe, she finds the .380 she's kept there for years, untouched. She runs her fingers over the gunmetal, looking at her reflection in it with a frown, then sets it under her pillow beside her as she curls up.

She knows she needs to rest, now, but when she wakes up, she knows what she has to do.

Allyson's face stares back at her from the framed picture on her bedside table, smiling, and it doesn't take Karen long to fall back asleep.

* * *

Allyson has no idea how much time has passed before she finally comes to, face down in a pile of leaves. It's still bright outside and her head still throbs painfully, along with her whole body. The adrenaline that instantly kicks in helps a little with the pain, but it doesn't make it any easier to lift her limbs, which suddenly feel like lead. She grips her hand around the knife's handle, her hand still trembling, as she finds the braid she'd put in earlier half-gone, leaving her hair a tangled mess with leaves and blood matting it.

Moaning, Allyson tries to stand, only falling once more, nearly nicking herself with the knife in her hand.

"Fucking hell," she breathes softly, and then, tries standing again. Her leg burns in protest and so does her entire back and neck, nausea hitting her hard along with the pain all over, but she ambles with her leg merely a dead weight behind her to the nearest tree. The woods are dark and deep, intimidating, but looking back at the house behind her, it's clearly the only option she has.

She catches her breath by the tree, feeling blood trickle down her face as she realizes she can't breathe through her broken nose. As she tries to walk, she trips and falls again, moaning in pain as she falls onto her back. She starts seeing spots again, only able to see the house ahead through them.

Then she sees the Shape, standing in the distance, basked by the shadows from trees. Allyson swallows blood, trying to push herself back as he approaches her. She turns herself onto her stomach and starts to crawl away, feeling herself weep before she realizes it as his hand closes around her left ankle.

"No!" she screams, echoing in the forest, "please, just let me go! Please! You can't do this to me!"

She sobs as he drags her back, clawing futilely at the ground with her bleeding fingers.

Her fingers grip the handle of the knife and she blindly swipes at him. She hears an exhale of pain, and then, he twists her wrist so the knife falls out of her hand, pinning it above her head. She starts kicking wildly at him, her other hand reaching for the knife in her pocket that's no longer there. He pins her down effectively, putting pressure on her right leg as she screams in pain, holding her down there.

"Why are you doing this to me! Just let me go!"

He cocks his head down at her. One hand reaches to touch along the side of her face and she feels herself shake, jerking as he pushes back her hair as he stares down at her. Then, he relents, moving back so he can put his hands under her again, this time lifting her with one arm under her back and the other under her knees. She groans, clawing at the fabric of his coverall, her grip growing weaker as he carries her up the steps from the backyard into the house, the door shutting behind him.

This time, when he puts her in a room, it's not the same as before-the windows are barred shut and the bed's much smaller, like that of a child. Her legs hang off the edge when he sets her on her back on the bed. Her fingers catch along fire truck sheets as she tries to pull herself up. Michael moves her with ease so she's leaning against the fire truck headboard. She pants for air, then looks back at Michael, who's sitting on the edge of the bed alongside her.

"I-I'm-I'm sorry," she breathes out, lolling her head to the side. The sound of her blood in her nose as she tries to breathe makes her sick. Michael lifts up his hands and she instinctively jerks back, away from him.

"W-What are you doing-"

His fingers find her broken nose. Realizing what he's about to do, she bites down on her lip and calls out when he sets it back in place. Blood starts gushing freely down her nose once more, as better as it feels. Michael hands her a worn cloth and she holds it against her face, feeling grateful for that, at least.

That, and not being murdered, those are both pretty good right about now.

Michael and Allyson sit alongside each other for a long moment. Allyson merely breathes, in through her nose and out through her mouth, as she tries to recover from the events of earlier that day. There's no doubt she has a concussion and that her knee needs some sort of surgery. With adrenaline still pumping through her veins, she can't detect any more possible broken bones or injuries, but knows she'll feel the bruises and cuts later.

When her nose stops bleeding, she sets the cloth on the bedside table, and then looks back at Michael, whose gaze hasn't left hers yet.

"Michael-I-I just-" she exhales again. "I wish I knew why-why you've chosen me, of anyone in the world. My grandmother thought you were waiting for her-that's what she's told me all of my life. That you were waiting for her and she was waiting for you. But-I guess-were you waiting for me? I don't understand."

Michael lets out a long exhale.

"I don't get it, and I wish I did. I don't get why you left that dog for me-that was you, wasn't it?" Allyson doesn't notice the way his head cocks, ever so minutely, as she elaborates, "and you didn't kill me in the cruiser. I don't know what makes me special to you."

She reaches for him, which jars him-her hand catches along the fabric of his coveralls, along his sleeve. Michael glances down at her hand quickly, then back at her, as if she's burned him. She swallows thickly.

"All my life-the kids at school used to taunt me," she whispers, "they used to tell me that my uncle was the boogeyman. My mother always told me no, but-my grandmother, she never said a word. Everyone around town said it but I always denied it. Is that true?"

Michael obviously has no answer for her, nothing besides the sound of his heavy breathing. Then, she feels him touch along the inside of her wrist, which only serves to make her pulse go up, feeling as if that's the exact reaction he's searching for. Then he stands.

Emboldened, even after her botched escape attempt merely a half an hour ago, Allyson quickly reaches for his wrist.

"You don't have to leave," Allyson says softly, proud of herself that her tone doesn't waiver, not even as their eyes meet. His dull eye's frightening in the dull light of the bedroom as day turns to night, "you don't have to leave. Please-don't leave me alone, Michael. _Please_."

She's surprised when Michael actually obliges, sitting back down on the edge of the bed beside her, lithe, long fingers still wrapped around his wrist, skin smooth from lotion against his rough, aged skin. He flexes his palm and she immediately notices the way his knife glints in the light from the window.

Knowing she shouldn't fall asleep, she leans her aching head back against the pillows, eyes closing against the burn from the light outside. Michael watches her, all the while, and she feels the weight of his gaze on her.

It should intimidate her, the way he looks at her, the way he sits so close to her. Maybe it does and maybe some buried away part of herself is terrified right now, but she's turned it off, leaving just this. It's not a false sense of security because she knows he'll turn on her quickly enough.

But it's enough to send her off to sleep, slowly but surely, despite the way her pulse throbs painfully between her ears and the awkward arrangement of her body, absolutely exhausted and worn down. Whatever fight she has left in her will surely come back tomorrow.

When Michael knows she's asleep, he slowly pries his wrist out of her grasp, moving it to push her dark hair out of her face once more, taking in the way she sleeps, the dark bruises starting to blossom around her nose and eyes, the blood absolutely caking her sleep. She's almost unrecognizable from the girl who'd sat beside him in the cruiser just last night, but that same conviction is still there. The conviction that had led to her escape from Sartain's grasp and the same conviction that'd let her find her way out of the confines of the room earlier. It reminds him of her, and he has the cuts along his palms to prove it, still aching and smarting. The cut from their struggle in the woods isn't nearly as deep as the stab wound from the night prior, but it smarts, aches.

He stands, gaze still fixed upon her and then on the cut along his palm, knowing he won't make the mistake of underestimating little Allyson ever again.


	2. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another chapter in what just might be record timing! I'm working on updates for the sixth chapters of both Born and Skin Game, but inspiration's been nagging at me with this fic, especially as I eagerly await any news about Kills.
> 
> If you're looking for a cool John Carpenter song for atmosphere for this chapter outside of the Halloween soundtracks, check out "Night." Can't go wrong with his synth in any context.
> 
> Anyhow, onto the story. Happy reading!

**II.**

* * *

"Evil grew, it's part of you. And now it seems to be  
that every time I look at you, evil grows in me."

~ "Where Evil Grows" by The Poppy Family

* * *

Captivity serves to be unremarkably boring, when it comes down to it. The fact that Allyson is practically immobile adds to the monotony, her knee so swollen that it's almost comical, when she gets the chance to actually roll up her pant leg to look at it. It's angry, red, and bruised, with no distinction between her thigh and calf from the swelling. She winces when she rolls it back down.

Allyson's been so in and out that she can't decipher how many days have passed since Michael took her. Her body's so worn down that she practically can't even roll over. Some part of her must have shifted into survival mode because she thinks she's adapted remarkably well-every part of her that was once angry and terrified is now locked away deep inside, covered with a numbness like a thin sheet of ice. She feels fragile, like she's teetering on breaking-and that sense of fragility feels directly at conflict with every part of herself that's stowed every single weakness and vulnerability away deep inside of herself.

Like all other predators, if she shows Michael her weakness, he'll claw his way inside of her and never get out until whatever's left of her is gone, until she's just meat and bone. She can't allow _that_ , at the very least, even if she's physically little more than helpless and completely at Michael's whim.

It's still dark when the door unlocks. Her head lolls to the side as a cough escapes and, for a moment, she thinks she's home, in bed, taking a sick day. Her mother always brings her hot and sour soup and Pedialyte when she's sick-she'd even brought it to her when she was sick all day in bed on a Sunday with her first hangover. She closes her eyes, thinking of Karen Strode's cool hand pressed against her burning hot forehead and her bright smile down at her, all straight white teeth. Being the only daughter of a single mother had always led to an intense trust between them, even in Allyson's rebellious early teen years. Allyson quickly understood it was Karen overcompensating for the mother she never had in Laurie but she knew enough to deeply appreciate it, spoiled as she is now in almost every capacity.

When she opens her eyes, she only finds him staring down at her, face stark white in the darkness of the room, his palm over her forehead. The gesture's so nurturing that the absurdity of it makes her giggle. Michael must be so taken aback that he pulls away his hand, cocking his head down at her. She remembers he did the same to Dr. Sartain before he'd stepped on his head like a watermelon, and the visceral memory of the sound and sight of his brains on the ground makes her nauseous.

When she leans over to throw up in the trash can beside the bed, she throws up on the floor, all over Michael's shoes. She dry-heaves once or twice when there's nothing left to throw up, and then, inexplicably, laughs again, as if hurling all over the boogeyman's shoes is the funniest thing in the world. Tears stream down her cheeks from the force of her vomit from her throat and fully expects Michael to snap her neck right there.

Instead, he does nothing besides open up the box of juice on the bedside table, and holds the straw up to her mouth. Feeling humiliated, she drinks down half of it in one go, grateful for the sweetness of the apple juice to replace the acidity of the bile in her mouth. It's all she can smell and it makes her eyes water. She wrinkles her nose in disgust.

"Do you-can you take me to the bathroom, Michael?" her face goes hot. It's not the first time she's asked him such a thing but it's the first time she's asked him to shower in the days since he took her. There's enough running water for the toilet to flush so she knows there must be something to shower with, but the idea fills her with dread, especially with Michael constantly close by.

Before he can lift her, she clears her throat, "I mean-I need to clean myself off. Is there any soap?"

She knows she'd take anything at this point. Michael doesn't nod or shake his head, he merely picks her up and carries her to the bathroom down the hall. She closes her eyes at the way her head spins and the way her stomach burns with each movement she makes, especially not within her own control. When he seats her on the toilet, she goes to turn on the water in the old tub-it's full of rust and Allyson doesn't want to think of whatever else is inside. Furling her nose once more, she glances up at Michael.

"Do you-?"

Michael doesn't move. Her face goes hot, and she realizes he's not going to leave and that she doesn't even trust him to turn around to give her the modesty she wants, not with the window nearby after her last great escape. She huffs a laugh.

"Fine," she says, shaking her head as she peels the oversized sweater over her head, self-conscious. She'd never even undressed in front of Cameron, let alone Michael Myers. Even in just her blood-soaked and stained dress shirt, she doesn't think she can undress anymore, not with Michael watching her.

"Can you just-turn away, at least?" she asks, almost pleading.

After a moment, Michael turns, looking away. Grateful for the modesty and not wanting to waste a moment, she strips herself down to just her trousers and ruined bralette, caked dark red with blood that ruins the vibrant pink. She thinks to take off her pants too but she can't bring herself to, despite how dirty she knows her pants and underwear are. Her fingers find the pendant necklace around her neck that Vicky had gifted her for her birthday in December of last year. She thinks to take it off but realizes she may not have a chance to put it on again so she doesn't. Trembling all over, she moves to sit at the edge of the tub, barely able to balance herself, as she reaches for the slither of soap that's left. The water's freezing and she shivers some more as she puts her hair under it, but washing the dirt and grime off her head and face feels more incredible than words can describe. The water turns brown with her blood.

She's absolutely shivering by the time she's finished, most of the blood and grime gone. Her scalp still stings and she knows she hasn't gotten everything off, but she feels significantly more clean. She finds a towel on the toilet when she looks back at it and turns off the water, toweling off her soaked hair and wincing at how knotted it is when she runs her fingers through it.

A hand offers a clean, new sweater back to her. Her gaze flicks to his face and back at his hand, nodding as she takes it, struck by how bright pink it is even with its aged fabric. She shoves it quickly over her head, and the scratchy, warm fabric doesn't make her stop shuddering violently, eager to cover up to evade his prying gaze.

When he offers his hand to her, she takes it to climb out of the tub, barely able to move her knee as she practically falls against him, ungraceful. Michael lifts her up in response with her arm over his shoulder and she has nothing left in her to feel shame or bashful about it.

This time, he takes her to a new bedroom, leading her to wonder just how many rooms are in this house. There's a big bed and a vanity with an expensive looking mirror, along with another window with wrought iron bars spread over it, preventing her escape. Michael sets Allyson on the vanity stool, where she finds a brush waiting for her.

"I feel like I've been saying 'thank you' non-stop," Allyson admits, picking up the brush to start pushing it through her hair, wincing at the way she tugs at both the knots and the cuts on her scalp. Gritting her teeth, she starts to brush through the tangles and knots, tears springing in her eyes until her hair returns to its smooth, wavy texture. Her eyes are bloodshot from constant tears and the bruises around her eyes and nose are black, and she knows in some deep way that this isn't the same girl who she was only yesterday.

Behind her, Michael cocks his head, only his face illuminated in the moonlight from the window beside them. Otherwise, he's as still as a mannequin, and it unsettles her enough to make her hands tremble so hard she almost drops the brush as she sets it back on the vanity. She remembers reading about the way he'd silently approached his sister from behind as she sat at her vanity before stabbing her sixteen times. She feels her breath catch in her throat as she quickly moves to the bed, feeling sick to her stomach once more.

Now that her hair's drying, the sweater she's wearing is noticeably warmer than the previous one and she's grateful for it. She exhales, leaning back against the pillows.

"Do you ever sleep?" she asks, unable to bite back the trademark sarcasm her mother had always told her would get her in trouble, "or is that something you don't need, too? I've never seen you eat, either. Maybe you really are the boogeyman."

Allyson's gotten used to this, in some way, just talking at him with no response at all. She has no idea if he even listens, but the fact that he doesn't just outright leave leads her to believe that he at least hears what she says. Whether or not her nervous chatter actually means something to him-that's a different story. Her survival mode doesn't quite take that into account because it's so insignificant.

Predictably, Michael doesn't answer or give any sign he's listening. Instead, he steps toward her. She goes tense as she always does-she still doesn't know what he wants from her, from all of this, and he can be so unpredictable that she knows he can simply kill her at the flick of a switch. Instead of anything insidious, he pulls the scratchy, old blanket on the bed over her, almost tucking her in. The trembles that start to wrack her form are not merely from the draft in the room around them.

"T-thank you."

Exhaling softly, she closes her eyes, unable to keep herself from whimpering at the way Michael's fingers push through her hair. She feels like a little kid again, closing her eyes hard to will away whatever monster her imagination conjured up, burrowed safely beneath a pile of blankets. She knows that unlike then, that alone doesn't ensure her safety. There is no refuge from _him_ anymore, not when he's seemingly crawled his way into every part of her life to the point where she's now entirely at his whim. If he left her here, she has no doubt of the fate that would await her.

She wonders if he enjoys her like this, entirely at his whim, frightened but entirely reliant on him all the same, and knows somehow that that is the case. There's no care here. Even if they were family, he could never love her, at least not in the way normal people do. Not when to love is to possess and own her like this, as gentle as he could be with her. She knows better.

_You're losing it. It's the fever and the cold, you're losing it, for thinking this man could ever love you in any way._

She doesn't want to think about that, that or the way his breathing goes heavier the more he watches her. If she thinks long enough, she's able to conjure up the image of her mother once more, with her ash blonde hair that she perpetually curls in the same style every day. Her mother has always had such a terrible singing voice but it doesn't stop her from singing as she cooks breakfast and makes coffee every morning, just in time for Allyson to get back from her daily jogs. It's usually a spinach omelet and potatoes, but it occasionally varies. Laurie had apparently never been a good cook, or she just never cooked for her mother, so her mother makes it a point to be the source of all three of Allyson's meals.

The more she thinks about her mother, the more she aches.

The only suitable replacement for human contact is the man before her, who hasn't even moved an inch, steadily reminding her more and more of a mannequin.

She opens her eyes, biting her lip as she looks at Michael.

Feeling her head spin, she pats the spot next to her on the bed. He cocks his head.

"You can-you can lie down with me, if you want."

Allyson can hardly believe the words that come out of her mouth before they do and her head spins, the closer he gets. When Michael lies on the bed beside her on his back, his legs nearly hang off the edge, he's so tall, and he lies above the blanket in a way that she can't imagine is comfortable. She feels even smaller in comparison to him in almost every way-he's seemingly all hard muscle and bulk, even at his current age, and the strength that courses through him almost palpably radiates off him. He could reach over and snap her neck or strangle her if he wants to, quicker than she could think about it. In comparison, her lithe form is so willowy that she knows she's lost at least some weight from muscle loss and from eating one to two times a day, compared to whenever she wanted. She's weak and powerless.

He watches the way her face changes as her thoughts race, and she looks back at him, lying on her back beside him. They're only an inch away from touching and she has no intentions of reaching out to him-this is more than enough for tonight, even if she's desperate for contact in some way and thinks that maybe he knows it.

_What is wrong with me?_

"Does this mean I was wrong about you sleeping?" she asks, a smile trying the corners of her mouth that doesn't quite reach her eyes. If Michael finds humor in that, he doesn't make any sort of indication. His breathing stays the same, calming and deep, and she can't tell if he's actually falling asleep and knows she doesn't want to lean over to look.

She rolls over to face him, wincing at the way her body seems to protest. Her palm spreads out in the small space between them.

"Goodnight, then, I guess," she says, closing her eyes and trying to will herself to relax, even with Michael Myers lying next to her, the two of them so close that he could simply reach out and end her life whenever he wanted to and however he wanted to.

She likes to think she could do the same and she chases that visceral thought to sleep-straddling him to pin him down with all of her one hundred and forty five pounds, wrapping her hands around Michael's throat and squeezing tight, as if she were squeezing the juice out of a lemon. Squeezing until he stopped breathing, until there would be nothing in those black eyes, squeezing until his left breath would leave him and he'd be limp underneath her as she screamed into the hollow place left inside of his body.

It'd be so easy. So simple.

In fact, it's the most comforting fantasy she's conjured up in all of her time here in Charlie Bowles' abandoned old house, and she doesn't know what that makes her.

* * *

Days turn into weeks. Before Karen knows it, it's almost Thanksgiving-which means it's almost been a month. Hawkins' and Vicky's respective wakes and funerals means more scrutiny, more attention, and it's something that's both a blessing and a curse. The FBI serve to be both helpful and bumbling all at once, just as frustrating as the Warren County Police Department. She holds two press conferences and a tour of Allyson's room, as much as it pains her, but otherwise keeps to herself. The case starts going cold and it surprises her how quickly apathy seems to set in. The media gets more hungry, more ruthless, so much so that she leaves the television off most of the time when she is actually home.

Only a day after getting out of emergency surgery for a burst appendix, Laurie started feeling coherent enough to fight for a discharge. After assigning an outpatient nurse to visit once every few days, she got her wishes, and with no home to return to, it was seemingly unspoken that Laurie would go home with Karen.

Meeker drives the two women home in the cruiser, Laurie sat in the back, after they'd barely dodged the flock of reporters constantly stationed at the entrances and exits of Haddonfield Memorial for the past few weeks, along with Karen's house. The constant police attention and blackout curtains kept prying eyes from seeing too much and Karen's been a good enough sport with reporters that it somewhat helps quell their hunger. However, it doesn't stop either of her phones from ringing or her email from going off, so she deactivates her email and sends everything to voicemail to comb through later.

Laurie and Karen have no extended family-the rest of the Strodes now dead, it's only the two of them, along with Allyson-whose abduction only weighs heavier on Karen each and every day. Laurie's been holding it together for the two of them the more she's healed, which Karen is grateful for.

When they arrive back home, Meeker locks the door behind him, and Laurie immediately finds Allyson's senior portrait hung by the foyer Her brow furrows as she bites into her lower lip, her expression otherwise unreadable. Karen slides in behind her in the narrow hallway, a lithe hand spreading over the small of Laurie's back.

"Do you want some tea or coffee, mom?" Karen tries a smile that only ends up getting tearful, "I even got that gross strawberry Nesquick that you've always liked."

Laurie glances at Karen, returning the smile, one that doesn't quite reach her eyes.

"I'll take some of that, sure. Can I-can I go up to her room?"

Karen's heart starts to race. She'd even given the press a brief tour of Allyson's room, but beyond that, she hadn't dared touch anything in it. She leaves the door open, but she hasn't gone in it since.

But she nods, obligingly.

"I mean-sure, if you can with your stitches-"

Laurie waves off her concern.

"It's not that many stairs, Karen, and they're not steep. I'll be fine."

Karen exhales, knowing she can't quite stop her mother from doing anything if she wanted to, but appreciating the fact that she asked this time instead of simply invading her boundaries like she's always done before. She also knows that Laurie wants to talk privately, away from Meeker's prying ears, even if he means well.

The two of them head up the stairs. Allyson's bedroom suite is the first door on the left, painted purple with a glow in the dark solar system of stickers above her full-sized bed. There's a variety of posters on her wall-mostly shows and the indie music she likes, along with a vanity mirror plastered with concert tickets and polaroids and pictures, mostly consisting of her and Vicky, Karen, Laurie, and, occasionally, Cameron.

Her bed's still made and there's still an unkempt pile of laundry on the floor, pointedly around the hamper, and a mess of cosmetics all over her vanity including spilled foundation. Karen hasn't even had the heart to pick any of it up.

Laurie sits on Allyson's bed, gently patting the spot beside her. Karen shuts the door behind her and walks over, avoiding the mess on the floor as she moves to sit alongside her mother. Laurie wraps an arm around Karen's shoulders and Karen instinctively moves to lay her head on her mother's shoulders, feeling her aged fingers push through her hair, grateful for the uncharacteristic warmth from her mother.

"I miss her so much, mom," Karen cries softly.

"I know. So do I-but she's not dead yet."

"How can you know that? _He_ took her-I doubt he'll ever show her mercy, not after what we did to him-"

Laurie pulls away, taking both of Karen's hands in her own.

"Is that it, then?" she asks, sounding sharp, "is that all the fight you have left in you?"

This is the Laurie Strode that Karen grew up with. However, unlike when she was a child, she knows she needs the firm and sure guidance of the mother she knows best.

Karen sniffs, wiping at the tears that fall with the back of her hand, and shakes her head. Laurie presses her forehead against Karen's in return, cupping the side of her face.

"We're going to find her, baby. We will. I promise you that."

The two of them part after a moment of mutual comfort, Karen reaching for a tissue from the box on Allyson's bedside table to wipe off her face quickly, tossing the tissues in the trash as Laurie stands, rifling through Allyson's drawers. Karen almost admonishes her for bending over and looking through drawers so soon after her procedure before biting her tongue-she won't waste her words when her mother won't listen and she also knows her mother doesn't want to be babied, not now.

In the bottom drawer under a pile of polaroid photos, Laurie finds a half-finished bottle of watermelon vodka, a jar of untouched marijuana buds, and the envelope with the wad of cash she'd given her just the other day. There's pictures messily scattered over the drawer, which Laurie starts taking out to pile onto the floor.

"Mom!" Karen exclaims, with no time to react to the contraband among her daughter's belongings. "Mom, what are you doing?"

"I'm looking for something," Laurie says as she rifles through the photos. Karen shakes her head, bending down on her knees to help.

"What is it you're looking for?"

"I gave Allyson a bracelet once. With our initials along the inside of it."

"So what?"

"If it's not here-"

"Mom, slow down! If it's not here, it could be on Allyson! You don't know!"

" _He_ could've taken it, Karen!" Laurie sounds choked up. " _You_ don't know! I didn't see her wearing it! I never see her wearing it, she doesn't because she's so afraid of losing it."

Karen rests a hand on Laurie's shoulder, shaking her head, "hey, it's okay, mom-it's okay-"

"Have any of the investigators touched anything in the house?"

Karen shakes her head.

"No. It's not a part of the crime scene, mom! Please, you need to relax-"

Laurie struggles to stand, balancing on Allyson's bed, and opens up the closet doors frantically. Karen nearly stumbles on her way to stop her in her frenzy.

"You need to relax, okay? You're going to burst your stitches. Why don't you go lie down?"

It's very clear that Laurie's too wired to relax, though the amount of exertion and the leftover morphine from the hospital etches exhaustion over her aged features. Karen rubs her hand over her back, pleased that she's not so riled up anymore, at the very least.

"I'll show you to the guest room, okay? How about I bring you up some of that gross strawberry milk you like? I got some, just for you. And-I'll be starting dinner soon enough. You should rest before then."

"Fine. After I wake up-I'm going to go find Allyson."

"That's fine," Karen concedes, half trying to soothe Laurie and half trying to soothe herself, "and I'll be right beside you. But what you need is rest right now, okay? Then we can go out and look. I've already been to so many candlelit vigils and I've already looked all over for her, but we can look together."

The two women step out of Allyson's ransacked room, where Karen escorts Laurie to the small guest bedroom that sits at the end of the hall, complete with a full-sized bed and television. She pulls back the quilt so Laurie can lie down, tucking her mother into bed with a kiss on the cheek before shutting the door behind her.

She steps downstairs quietly, finding Meeker in the kitchen, peering out of the curtains. Exhaling, she tucks her hair behind her ears, starting a pot of coffee in her French press.

"I'm making enough for two," Karen announces. Meeker glances at her, offering a smile.

"I appreciate that, ma'am."

"No worries. You're the one who's always stationed here, it's the last I could do."

She starts washing the dishes in the sink, knowing she's using cleaning as a coping mechanism like she always does, but is proud of herself for not going on a manic deep cleaning and organizing spree by now. The dishes are a fine compromise to make. Usually, she puts on her Pandora station to whatever she and Allyson like to listen to, but she's in no mood to listen to music today and hasn't been since Halloween.

Still, Karen tries not to regress back too much, clearing her throat as she digs for her dishwasher tablets under the sink, "so, how old is your daughter?"

"I've got two. One daughter, Kelly, she's in college at Haddonfield University. My other girl, Deb, she's a junior at the high school."

"Huh. I wonder if she and Allyson know each other," she pointedly refuses to use past-tense with anything when it comes to Allyson, "Allyson takes mostly honors classes."

"So does Deb. I think she mentioned they were in the same chemistry class when I asked her."

"Yeah, Allyson is a shy girl, I'm sure they've never spoken if Deb hasn't mentioned it."

She pours two mugs of coffee, adding her creamer and sugar to her own.

"How do you take your coffee, Ben?"

"Just black is fine."

She offers him his mug and he nods in thanks as he takes a sip, even though it's scalding enough to burn. She leaves the French press in the sink to let it soak, then stands beside him at the window, careful to avoid stepping in the view of whoever may be watching.

"I heard your mother making a commotion upstairs."

"Yeah," she shakes her head, blowing on her coffee before taking a sip, "she thinks that Myers broke into our house to steal this bracelet. I don't know when he would've had the time, but I get it-I've been desperate for leads, too. Anything to find her."

"Do you think it could be something worth looking into?"

Karen shakes her head.

"I don't know-I just don't know. If he's been in here-all that means is that he planned this-"

The thought visibly upsets her, as her hand covers her mouth, an ungraceful sound escaping that isn't quite a sob because she has no tears left to cry. Meeker reaches out to squeeze her shoulder consolingly.

"I'll mention it to the department, okay?" Meeker says. She only nods, sighing as she sips at her coffee again. "I'm sorry we haven't had anything new these past few weeks. Honestly, anything helps-"

"It's not your fault. It's mine. I-I wasn't quick enough. I didn't-I didn't prepare her for any of this and I should've known-"

"Don't blame yourself. I know it's easy for me to say, because if anything happened to my girls-I wouldn't know what to do. But you shouldn't blame yourself. You did the best you could, considering the situation. We're going to find them, no matter what."

Karen goes quiet for a long moment, simply leaning against the wall, sipping her coffee.

Then, she says, "I'm going to go out myself after dinner, take a look around the area. I know they took the detail off the Myers house, even though the new owners vacated to put it on the market."

Meeker purses his lips.

"Yeah. They did. But we're always keeping an eye out on Lampkin Lane, you know that."

"Still. I don't know. I just-I don't want to miss her."

"I get that, Karen. I do. I'm assigned to go with you, wherever you go, so I'll come with you."

"You don't-"

"I don't care. You shouldn't go alone, and neither should your mother."

"You get off at eight. I'll be out way past then. You said it yourself, you have your daughter at home. We'll be fine here, trust me."

"No, I'm going with you. I already texted my wife and Kelly, they'll be coming, too."

Karen flashes a smile at him, grateful, even though she knows Laurie won't exactly get along with them that well, "I really do appreciate that, Ben. I do. You don't know how much it means to me."

She catches herself crying again, and she wipes the tears away, setting her empty cup in the sink, opening up her fridge to find the chicken breast she'd left to defrost overnight.

"I'm going to start dinner. You're welcome to have some, if you'd like."

"Sounds fine to me," he stays by the window, vigilant, "tell me, where do you plan to start?"

"I'm going to where she was taken, then I'll work my way from there."

"We can do that."

"My mom's going to be thrilled about this," Karen says, sarcasm dripping from her tone as she heats up a pot with olive oil and garlic. "I apologize for her in advance."

"Don't even worry about it. I know about her. I can't say that I blame her, can you?"

Karen's lips purse, the seemingly harmless inquiry bothering her more than she realized. It's not as if Meeker knows everything that happened between them. But now, she has context-Allyson's gone, and so Michael Myers has taken everything away from her, too.

So, to keep things simple, she nods and says, "I can't say that I do."

* * *

With each passing day, Allyson starts feeling marginally better, progressively less feverish until the fever's all gone. She's still sore all over and her knee sees no improvement-she doesn't want to think about what type of procedure she's going to need when she's out of here for it-but it helps her feel alert. She needs that, especially with Michael coming in and out, unpredictable as always. She can't help but wonder what he fills his days with when he's not with her and she knows she doesn't even want to think about that. He's perpetually covered in blood. It's always caked under his fingernails, and one day, there was blood and chunks of what looked like flesh around his collar and she feels sick thinking of what that could mean.

However, he comes to her like clockwork, lying down over the blanket while she sleeps under it, beside her in the bed. She wishes she weren't so grateful for the company, but her days are endless and boring. She's almost completely finished reading the Bible in the drawer beside her and she doesn't want to even try looking around the room, which means getting out of the bed. He's the only source of human contact she has and she can't help but feel crazy and wonder if he needs it, too. How many years did he spend in prison?

She doesn't voice any of that, however, and tries to keep their conversations-if she can even call it that-mostly harmless. She talks about her mom a lot. She asks to see her often. Michael doesn't seem perturbed by the inquiries, or her distress. He doesn't even seem to particularly enjoy it, at least not outwardly. It leaves her to wonder, and her thoughts, whenever she's not thinking about her family or friends or food, are consumed by him these days. She feels more and more like her grandmother every moment.

It's about a week after her shower when Michael comes in with her nightly dinner-this time, a bottle of coke and a protein bar. The sugar makes her nose scrunch but she's grateful for the rush, scarfing the protein bar and washing it down with the coke. Michael watches her all the while.

Allyson sets the wrappers on the bedside table, sitting up to look at Michael fully.

"It's been almost a month, I think," Allyson says quietly, "and you still haven't killed me. Yet you killed my friends. I wish you'd talk. I wish you'd answer me, somehow. But I don't even know if you have answers."

Her actions and her words are always at conflict. She craves contact and craves attention but she hates him. She's never hated anyone so much. And she wants him to know that. She has to hate him. What else does she have?

Michael doesn't listen to her, as always, and as always, he simply watches her. However, she's overcome with a sudden wave of dizziness and lethargy, which prompts Michael to lift her out of bed. She starts panicking at the sudden loss of control.

"What'd you do?" she asks, arms looping around Michael's neck. Whatever he'd put in her soda, it's strong, and though he hasn't touched her inappropriately this entire time, she's still terrified.

"Michael-" she says, groaning as her head falls against his shoulder as he takes her down the stairs. His weight makes the steps creak so loudly that she half-expects them to fall through the staircase in her half-conscious state.

"Please don't kill me-please-Michael-don't-"

She doesn't remember the incoherent babbling that follows-she simply passes out, leaving Michael to carry her to the car he'd parked down the street, piling her into the back. He'd shoveled with enough heavy-duty sedatives and psychotropic drugs in his life to have at least garnered what it does to people. The car's a SUV, big enough for Michael to load Allyson into the back inconspicuously and it's dark enough to take them to the house down the road. It's a log cabin, the only house within at least ten miles.

Each day, his plans of what he's going to do with Allyson change, but he understands that the Bowles house is no place for her to be. He knows he doesn't want her to die-at least, not very soon. The cabin belongs to an elderly woman with no family or friends that Michael's noticed the past several weeks, so disposing of her had been easy-her dog, not so much, but he'd managed. He knows they can't stay for very long before someone comes looking and especially considering there's a better possibility of Allyson potentially escaping.

He parks the SUV a mile away from the house and steps inside with her passed out in his arms. It's so cold that it's started to flutter snow, and he's noticed the way her teeth chatter in a way that doesn't affect him. She's so fragile and small and malleable., so human. He doesn't understand that, but understands that she isn't him.

Michael takes her upstairs to lie her down on what must be the woman's bed, noticing the small window above the bed. It's small, but not small enough that she won't fit. The storm window will be noisy when it comes off, and he wonders if she'll try to escape again-even if she can barely move with that knee of hers, she never ceases to surprise him. Her first escape had been brazen, if not stupid. Little Allyson must be smarter than that, now.

The room smells like lavender essential oils and laundry detergent. He fishes around the room for any sort of weapon and doesn't find anything besides bobby pins, a glass nail filer, and keys. He makes sure those are out of the room quickly, then simply watches Allyson as she sleeps.

He hadn't given her much-she wakes up within thirty minutes, groggily rubbing at her eyes and pawing at the cotton sheets, taking in her new surroundings in bewilderment. He stands in the corner of the room, basked in shadows, and she makes out his face.

"Michael-?" she asks, surprised, "where-where did you take us?"

He obviously doesn't answer her. She fumbles around, turning on the lamp before Michael's hand finds her wrist.

"I'm-I'm sorry, I was just turning on the light-"

He drops her hand, then.

She looks around the room, taking in every detail-the lights, the window that's far closer to the high ceiling, and the open closet door full of clothes. Her eyes flick around the room, looking for some kind of phone, but finds nothing, and her fingers smooth over the cotton sheets. She puts her face against the pillow and inhales the smell of detergent with a sigh. It's something she never thought she'd ever have to miss, but there's so much in her life that she's taken for granted up to this point.

When she glances up, Michael's hand is outstretched toward her. She takes it, steadier than before, still trying to fully wake up after Michael had drugged her. Besides her headache, everything else feels like it's in the proper place and she doesn't feel hurt or injured in any way, and she doesn't expect him to do anything like that to her but-she doesn't know. He terrifies her. She looks through the closet and finds a clean cream-colored sweater and trousers that she knows will be a little too big.

When he walks her to the bathroom attached to the master bedroom suite, he mercifully stays outside, shutting the door behind her. She locks it from inside, knowing he can open it if he wants to, but is grateful when he doesn't. There's no windows, nothing besides a tub with a duck-printed shower curtain, a big bath towel on the radiator, and a cabinet of toiletries. She stumbles to the tub, setting the clean clothes on the toilet, and starts to peel her dirty clothes from her body. She tosses them far away, disgusted at her dirty underwear and socks, her bra so caked with sweat and blood that she can no longer make out its bright pink color.

After turning the water to its hottest setting, she spreads Epsom salts in the tub and the bubble bath she finds beside it, searching desperately through the cabinet of toiletries for any kind of weapon. The most she finds is a pair of nail clippers-Michael had been thorough, vetting out this spot, but she expects nothing less.

Exhaling, she sinks into the tub, relieved to be in the hot water even if it's so scalding that it burns her skin, especially where she's cut. She reaches to shut off the water and simply lies there for a moment, soaking. Then, she dips her head underneath the water, closing her eyes.

She thinks that if she could keep it there, she'd stay there, submerged until everything would go to black. It'd be peaceful. Better than whatever it is that Michael has in store for her, even with this odd display of mercy. If anything, this makes her dread what's in store even more. Just letting go seems so easy, as easy as all the times she's dreamed of putting her hands around his throat and never letting go.

But she eventually pokes her head up, breathing deeply as she pushes wet hair away from her face. Her mother wouldn't want that, she knows it, and she knows that she has more fight left in her than that.

The water's pink around her from all of the dried blood and she scrubs herself clean, luxuriating in the lavender shampoo and conditioner-she's never been terribly fond of floral, but she's never smelled anything better.

She scrubs her face and body clean before she simply lies back in the tub, the water lukewarm by now, fingers touching over the pendant necklace she's refused to take off. She misses Vicky. She misses inconspicuously smoking a bowl in her room and college admissions being her biggest problems. Fuck, she even misses Cameron, as big of an asshole as he is. And Oscar-just thinking about the last time she saw him makes her sick.

It'd also been the first time she saw him. And now, this is her life.

After a long couple of moments, she extracts herself from the tub, drying off with the towel and changing into her new clothes. They're predictably a little too baggy, but otherwise, they feel good. The clean socks she slides onto her feet feel even better, even if she puts her shoes back on. The heat sends a flush to her cheeks but she doesn't mind, not after weeks of lying in the cold dark of her bedroom before.

In the cabinet, she finds an ace bandage, which she wraps around her knee. It feels good enough for her to actually be able to walk without it giving out so much, which comforts her even more. The nail clippers slide right into her pocket and she practically bathes herself in lotion and oil, the only comfort she's had in a long time besides him.

She's towel drying her hair when she ambles out in a puff of steam and smoke, finding him standing outside, waiting for her. Reluctantly, she takes his hand in hers and they go back to bed. She crawls under the covers with some difficulty and, after turning off the light, he lies down beside her.

In some way, she knows trying to appeal to whatever humanity may be left inside of him is futile-there is none. He has no emotions, no regrets, she's sure of it, and everything he does is to fuck with her head. She knows that, too.

But she pushes closer to him. He watches her, keenly.

Then, without saying anything, she moves her hair away to lie her head on his chest. It's the first time she's done anything like that, and she's trembling all over as she does it, but the steady thump of his heart and, even better, the sound of his heavy breathing. She squeezes her eyes closed, braced for any sort of reaction, but only feels his fingers in her hair. They feel like spiders and it's not much comfort at all, but it's something.

They lie like that in the dark for a long time, and she can't fall asleep, though she feigns it after a long time, scared of what will follow if she drifts off both at Michael's hands and in her dreams.

Somehow, it's daylight before she realizes it, and she's grateful when Michael removes her from him, leaving her and shutting the door behind him. She knows better than to get up and look around immediately-he could be anywhere, waiting for her next move. She hears creaking around the house and that's when she finally sits up, hair still damp and wavy from the evening prior. Pulling her hair back in a French braid is quick and easy and gets it all out of her face, and then she leans on the dresser to start looking through the room for anything she can use. As predicted, she finds nothing of use, and instead simply sits back down on the bed, her head in her hands.

Allyson wants to cry, but she doesn't. Instead, she flexes her leg before her, wincing in pain as she tries to remember the stretches the doctors had told her when she first tore it. It feels a little better, but she knows she's going to need to see a doctor when she gets out-this is only temporary.

Tears of pain start to blur her vision the longer she keeps at it, so she stops, fingers combing through the books along the bedside table. Reading outside of school's never quite been a hobby of hers, but she's even missed that lately. At least whoever's room this is has more than just the Bible.

She's not naive enough to think anything good had happened to whoever owned this room before Michael had taken the space as his own, and looking at the kindly old woman in the picture frame with kids around her beside the bed makes her queasy enough to set it down so she doesn't have to look anymore.

She pulls out a hardback with a glossy cover and doesn't know if her nerves will allow her to focus or concentrate because she reads the first page at least three times before giving up. She approaches the door, trying to quietly twist the knob and finding it completely stuck. Frowning, Allyson ambles to the bed to climb on top, peering out of the window. Her nose barely touches the sill and it's closed shut. Heavy snow blankets the ground as more snow falls on top of it, leaving the world outside of the cabin completely impenetrable.

"Well, shit," she mutters, sitting back down on the bed, feeling defeated. Tears start to prick her eyes again, realizing she's been trapped long enough for fall to transition to winter. She doesn't want to be here any longer. She wants to go home. She wants to see her mother. She wants to see her grandmother. She doesn't want to see him anymore, even if he'd taken her here instead of the house they'd been in before. It's almost her birthday and the idea of being trapped here to see it makes her sick.

Pulling out the nail clippers from her pocket, she toys with it for a long time until she pulls out the sharp nail filer end, holding it tight enough in her hand to break skin. She looks down at at the cut on her skin smiling with a glint of mirth in her eyes.

When she tucks it away in her pant pocket, she's looking up at the skylight above as she hears more footsteps creak throughout the house, keeping her hand wrapped around her new weapon in her pocket.

It'll have to do.

* * *

It turns out that spending night after night searching is futile. Laurie's exhausted by the end of the week, especially with no leads, and Karen's faring no better, either. By the time the lengthy Thanksgiving weekend hits everyone hard. The search parties have waned already and now, for the weekend, everything seems as a standstill.

Everything is a standstill for everyone but Karen, who spends the day posting missing fliers downtown. She doesn't even think to make dinner-Laurie orders takeout, the same they always used to have while Karen was growing up. The nostalgia at smelling the Chinese food is oddly comforting but jarring.

Meeker had invited them over, but Laurie had outright declined and Karen knew she couldn't spend the day indulging, not with the chair that Allyson always sits in still empty.

She's returning home from the day to settle in for dinner with Laurie when the doorbell rings. Peering through the curtains, her heart jumps when she sees Meeker and the young officer he's usually stationed around the house, and she opens the door quickly, dreading the worst as she ushers him inside.

"Karen?" Laurie asks from the dining room, "what's going on?"

Karen feels tears start to prick her eyes as she tries to hold back a sob. Meeker reaches out a hand to squeeze her shoulder.

"I wanted you to hear this from me, okay?" We didn't find a body-but we found her blood and his blood all over a house in Russellville about twenty-five miles from where she was taken. We found another woman's body and a dog-their DNA's everywhere, and there's signs of a struggle, footprints in the snow outside. We're sending out dogs and a search party now-"

Karen immediately goes to grab her coat, not noticing her mother in the room with her doing the same.

"I have to go-"

Meeker puts a hand on her shoulder as Laurie inspects her handgun in the light of the living room.

"There's nothing you can do right now, Karen, besides be strong and be here, okay?" he's comforting but firm, as always, as his gaze holds her, "please. I'm begging you."

"I can't just stay here!"

Meeker goes to turn on the television. News about it is on every station. Karen feels rage well up in her at not being notified before the media, at the remarks from anchors about the poor outlook for Allyson.

She quickly turns the television off, shaking her head.

"I'm going."

Resigned, Meeker exhales.

"I can't stop you. I'm heading to the scene now. You can follow me."

The two Strode women load into Karen's car. Karen's too high off adrenaline to let tears fall, heart racing at the mere idea that there's a possibility Allyson's still out there. They follow Meeker's cruiser to the scene, a full twenty minute drive away. As soon as Karen steps out of the car, she's ambushed by the reports on the street beside the cabin, which she shoves away as Meeker escorts her closer to the house.

Two other officers meet them at the partition tape, where Meeker steps underneath. Helicopters roar above their heads, searching through the thick forest around them. The force of their closeness sends Karen's hair flying right into her face.

"We found the homeowner's dead body chained up in the basement, where she was joined with her dog," one of the officers clears his throat, clearly still disturbed by whatever he saw, "there's a lot of blood in the upstairs bedroom, downstairs. A test confirmed it was Myers', and Allyson's. We found Allyson's hair in the tub, on the bed, and we have two sets of footprints leading to the forest."

He clears his throat again, stammering. Karen starts feeling progressively more agitated at the lack of information, especially with the hectic chaos of their surroundings. It'd been her own fault for coming, but who could blame her? She needs to be here.

"What is it?" Karen asks urgently.

"The Bowles house is a couple of miles down the road. We're sending out a team to look through it now."

"The Bowles house?" Karen asks.

"You've never heard of Charlie Bowles?" Laurie asks, sounding particularly grim, "shortly after Michael killed his sister, he killed his family. The house was abandoned, as far as I know. No one wanted to touch it-my father compared it to Amityville."

"Oh, god."

Laurie's arm comes around her, holding her up. She's grateful for that.

Meeker sighs.

"We're doing the best we can, Ms. Strode," the officer says, "I don't think it's good for you to wait around here all night."

"Why, are we going to get in the way?" Laurie snaps, growing equally as impatient as Karen.

"You'll freeze out here," Meeker interrupts, ignoring her hostility, "and there's not much you can do here for her besides wait. You can do that at home, or inside your car. Come on. You know I'll call you both as soon as anything comes up."

Karen doesn't want to, and Laurie is the one who ushers her away. Meeker steps under the tape to escort them to their car, away from the camera flashes and prying eyes of the press.

"Why don't you go to my house?" he offers after they're both inside, leaning against Karen's driver's side door and through the window as blue and red lights illuminate his aged features, "my girls and my wife are home. They've got plenty to eat. You won't be alone, either."

Karen's grateful for Meeker's kindness and always will be.

But, she knows she's lying when she says "okay" and heads back onto the freeway toward Haddonfield. Allyson is out there somewhere and they're going to find her, just as they're going to find him.

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We only have one more chapter left to go, and I'm already contemplating writing a sequel. Thank you for your feedback thus far, it's always appreciated and it only encourages me, so leave a review if you can. Positive feedback and constructive criticism are more than welcome!


	3. Part III

**III.**

* * *

"Here is the knife that kills me in your hand."  
~ _Gut Symmetries_ , by Jeanette Winterson

* * *

Every room in Laurie Strode's big house in the woods had been painted a different, bright color-and Laurie had never changed it or bothered to since they first bought it, according to her mother. Allyson was twelve when she finally convinced her to paint the living room an earthy green. They'd picked out the swatches themselves at a hardware store and it'd been a multiple day affair because the room was so big. Before they knew it, Halloween rolled around, but Allyson had begged her mother to allow her to go over and she'd been allowed to, as long as she got her homework done before she started to paint.

It'd been dark out for some time when Laurie ordered Chinese food for the both of them and they sat side-by-side watching the television in the kitchen together. Allyson's digging at her noodles when the segment about Halloween 1978 comes on the television. Even without her grandmother reminding her constantly, she knows the weight of that date in this town, and the legacy of her last name connected to it.

She'd looked over at her grandmother for a reaction, not seeing anything, not even when they'd said his name or showed distant pictures of him at the back of a police cruiser, of her in an ambulance. They even hosted a segment at Smith's Grove.

Allyson had changed the channel to something on Cartoon Network-she can't quite remember it now-and kept eating, not tasting anything.

That's when Laurie cleared her throat.

"It's been thirty-five years," she'd said softly.

"What?"

"It's been thirty-five years," she repeated again.

Allyson's eyes had widened in realization, and she remembers wrapping her arms around her grandmother, who only covered one of her lithe hands with her own hand, calloused and weathered over her skin and then leaning her head on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry," Allyson had said, knowing there was nothing she could do.

"It's not your fault," Karen says, clearing her throat, then glancing down at Allyson, whose chestnut brown hair shined in the low light of the kitchen, she says, "one day, before he comes back, I'll teach you how to protect yourself. I promise. I won't let anything happen to you but I can't always be there."

"What?" Allyson had asked, feeling stupid, as she'd pulled back to look at her grandmother.

Laurie had looked away.

"What does that mean, when _who_ comes back?" she'd asked again.

"Nothing. Nevermind. Forget I said it."

"Okay."

They'd kept eating and her grandmother never brought that up again, but Allyson's never forgotten that.

Especially not now, not with the sharp end of the nile clipper lodged in Michael's neck and getting his blood all over her hands and face when she tries to run away. His vice grip suddenly grabbing her bad leg sends her falling to the floor with a shriek, clawing at the carpeted floor desperately as Michael tries to drag her closer to him. She kicks at him hard, ignoring the way her leg burns in protest as he falls back onto the bed, grateful she'd been wearing her oxfords so the sharp part goes right into his eye. Adrenaline pumping through her veins, she quickly gets up, opening the door to start running down the hall away from the open bedroom door, feeling almost blind with how unfamiliar these surroundings are.

She misses the platform and goes falling down the stairs, screaming all the while. When she lands on her back hard on the bottom, she feels blood trickle from her nose and down her face, into her mouth, and swears she has tunnel vision when she looks back up and finds him. He stands at the top of the steps, menacing especially in the shadows from the stained glass window beside his head.

Then he starts walking down the steps, quickly, but not running-he could run, but he doesn't.

She quickly stands, trying to yank open the front door and finding the doorknob taken right off, then runs into what she sees next: the basement door, which she slams shut behind her as she manages to run down the steps. The sound of the door opening is distant as she heads toward what must be the back door, making her way in the darkness of the basement when her palm spreads.

Feeling slickness over her palms, she screams when she finds the same old woman with no eyes staring back at her, illuminated hauntingly in the low light of the basement, but knows she has no time to truly react. She runs up to the door and struggles to push it open, falling out onto the snow immediately. She groans at the sudden coldness, standing up as she struggles to wade through it, screaming for anyone who may be listening-no one is, of course, as Michael had picked out the ideal spot to keep her captive. There's the woods, but then there's the main road ahead, quiet as all things seemingly are in the snow.

Ambling toward the main road, she waves her hands around, screaming so loud it reverberates around her, nearly slipping on the sheet of black ice that seemingly covers the road.

Then strong arms wrap around her, a hand covering her mouth as she screams. Her teeth bite down hard on his fingers and he grunts, and she wants to wretch when she feels the stubs of where his fingers used to be over her mouth, when she tastes flesh in her mouth that she quickly spits out.

She falls hard on her back on the icy road and Michael tries to stab her side, only hitting her shoulder when she blocks him, before she kicks the knife hard out of his hands. Both of his big hands come around her face and neck then as she tries to fight him off but fails, the breath already out of her as he chokes her hard, until everything goes to black.

When she awakens, she finds herself in yet another room, this time unfamiliar, her shoulder stinging as she feels warm blood trickling out of the wound. The hardwood floor under her back makes it hard to stand and when she puts her hand to her shoulder, she sees red all over her fingers.

_Oh, god. He's going to kill me now, after what I did to him. This is it. I have to get out of here._

Groaning, Allyson stands at her full height, looking at the bedroom door-there's a door knob, and she quickly heads toward, thinking to open it before realizing he could be anywhere, and he's not in here. So she locks the bedroom door instead, grabbing a pair of scissors from the desk to shove in her pocket, and finds the only window in the room behind the big bed frame. It's not boarded up, but it's covered with big blackout curtains, as if the owners of the home intend to cover it up and move it.

She ambles to it, cupping her shoulder until she needs both hands to try to push the bed frame out of the way of the window to squeeze her lithe body in the space there. It's hard, especially with the fact that her cut on her shoulder only seems to open further along with her knee, and she can barely move the bed even an inch. Tears of frustration and pain prick her eyes as she bangs on the window, screaming to whoever may be listening.

Finally, she manages to make just enough space for herself to claw at the window's lock, pushing herself between the curtains to make out the street below.

Her heart drops.

Lampkin Lane. She runs this way every morning, and she knows exactly where she is-and he must have taken her here to reenact Judith Myers' murder, which she knows so many minute details about because of her upbringing in Haddonfield.

_Is this what he's always wanted from me? Everything he seems to do seems to be on a whim, because he enjoys it._

Because he's curious. About her. She wishes he weren't, and that he'd stop playing with his food.

Looking back at the door, she exhales a sigh of relief when she finds it unmoving, and turns back to face the window. She has to outsmart him, even if she's in his territory, now.

When she finally opens the window, she almost punches a whole through the screen before strong arms wrap around her, depositing her onto the bed. She feels a blade stab into her other shoulder and her cries turn into screams of anguish, falling to the floor and quickly crawling over to the desk before he can stab her again.

She throws the swivel chair at him hard as soon as she can stand, screaming as she heads out of the bedroom door. Apparently, getting hit with the chair doesn't affect him much, as he grabs her arm. Immediately, she reaches back to stab him without hesitation between the juncture of his shoulder and neck, relieved when he releases her, even momentarily, as she falls back onto the open door. There's blood absolutely everywhere and it's nearly black in the moonlight, and the stark white of his mask is stained with it. She doesn't know if it's hers or his, and she doesn't look too long to figure it out, clawing her way out of the door to run down the hall.

She cries out when he grabs her again, seeing the way his knife shines in the moonlight, and fully expects him to kill her then.

"Michael!"

Surprised, she looks up to find her mother standing in front of the staircase. The gun in her hand that Allyson doesn't see cocks, and she smiles widely as Michael stills, clearly also surprised to find her there.

"Mom!" Allyson cries, feeling Michael's hold tighten around her, her back to his front. Tears stream down her face as she claws at his wrist that rests precariously close to her throat, and knows he's enjoying this, somehow, seeing the two of them cry over each other like this and keeping her away from her mother. He's cruel. He's evil. She knows that much, and this only cements it, which she finds herself oddly thankful for-she's tired of trying to poke holes in that, in any possible humanity left inside of him, for the sake of her own survival at his hands.

"Let her go, Michael!" Karen exclaims. "Let her go! Take me instead-just please, let Allyson go, Michael!"

Michael goes so still that it makes Allyson whimper, sharing a long gaze with her mother as she reaches out toward her, so relieved to see her mother after all the time she's spent away from her and yet so terrified, all at once. Now, more than ever, she's completely at Michael's whim, and it'd take one decisive strike to end her life right there.

He's so quick when he does it-throwing her on the floor against the wall and taking the few steps to close the distance between him and Karen. Her head hits the sharp edge of the threshold of the bedroom door, spots dancing across her vision as a white hot pain radiates from her head to her spine. Allyson screams as the gun goes off and Michael grunts, a bullet hitting him somewhere.

Karen screams even louder as Michael stabs her in the abdomen. When he takes the knife out, dark blood covers it, oozing on the floor.

"Mom!" Allyson weeps.

"Allyson! Allyson!" Karen says, coughing, and Allyson can't even see what's happening as Karen pushes the knife out of Michael's hands and it lands on the floor beside Allyson. Allyson's hands tremble as she reaches for the knife's handle, feeling ready to retch once more as she watches her mother and Michael struggle against the top platform of the stairs.

"Allyson! Run! Run, Allyson, go!"

Allyson struggles to stand with the way her knees shake, holding the knife in hand, sobs wracking her body as she watches Michael put his hands around Karen's neck. She can't watch after that, knowing what's coming next.

"Allyson, go! I love yo-"

"Mom, no!"

The sickly crack of her neck breaking that follows chills Allyson to the bone as Michael pushes her mother's corpse down the stairs like she's merely a dead weight. Then, Michael turns to face Allyson, who holds the knife out in front of her, hardly able to even process what he's done. She cries so hard she hiccups with the force, stepping back as Michael steps toward her, slow and menacing. He enjoys making her cower, enjoys making her cry. She knows that much for sure.

"Oh-Michael-" she feels absolutely pathetic, stupid, and knows she must look it as she backs away from him, "why? Why are you doing this to me?"

His head cocks, as if perplexed by the question, and he stops. She doesn't understand him, and realizes she doesn't have to try, not anymore.

And, as much as she wants to hit him back now, she knows she needs to heed her mother's warning and flee. Quickly she opens the door behind her and locks it when she's inside of the room. Looking around, she finds the window, which seems like the obvious choice-until she sees the drop onto the concrete below.

Thinking fast as he bangs on the door, trying to break through it with the force of his hands alone-which he seems to be doing successfully-she spots the walk-in closet, noticing the door's already slightly ajar. She slips inside, holding the knife up to get ready to strike as she watches the door, fighting to catch her breath and to keep herself from crying too loudly. Blood drips onto the floor near her feet and it's all she can taste and smell.

The banging goes quiet for a moment. Her breath catches in her throat as she trembles so hard she almost shakes the knife, bracing herself for the impact of what's to come. Sirens wail in the distance and she knows she tells herself that she's going to be okay, over and over again, under her breath.

Then the door opens wide. The Shape steps into the room with what looks like an iron rod, and it shines in the moonlight.

Before she can even hesitate, she flies out of the closet, charging into Michael with all of her might and stabbing him in the shoulder, the same place he'd stabbed her. As she rips the knife out with a scream, his hand wraps around her throat, pinning her against the wall. She chokes, stabbing him again as he tries to knock the knife out of her hands, this time hitting him in the abdomen.

Michael hits her so hard with the iron rod that she falls against the wall beside the window, blood streaming down her face as her nose breaks again against it. She coughs loudly and wheezes for air, the breath effectively knocked out of her with how hard she's been struck. The knife shines invitingly in the moonlight from outside, lying on the floor a few inches away from her. She reaches for it as if it's her lifeline, stumbling as she tries to steady herself on her feet. Her nose broken, her knee completely gone to shit, her head spinning-she knows she's broken other bones in her body as she struggles to gasp for air, blood streaming down her face and her throat. Her shoulders ache and she can barely move her arms, can barely hold up her head.

He looks back up at her from where he cups the wound in his abdomen, gushing blood hard.

Then he charges toward her, earning a scream as the two of them go crashing through the window, into the backyard. She holds onto him tightly as they're sent down onto the snowy lawn, a mix of cold and icy rain wailing down on them as they land.

It's all a blur for a few moments-landing on him had broken her fall, but she'd broken her arm over his sternum. She can see the bone in her arm poking through her skin. Swallowing the bile that rises in her throat at the sight, her hand trembles so hard trying to grab for the knife she'd been holding before he'd sent them out the window, before he opens his eyes. It's so hard to see in the dark, especially with her left eye so completely swollen that she can't even open it, let alone make anything out.

All of this is everything like she'd dreamed, in a macabre way. She's so full of rage and pain and so disoriented from the fall that she reaches out a lithe hand to grasp at his throat, knowing she should run but knowing she wants this more, no matter the cost. She pushes the mask up, off his face, leaving the two of them exposed. He's even more covered in blood underneath the mask and she can barely make out his face in the dark, even with the moonlight to help her. It doesn't help that she's bleeding all over him, too. She pushes matted hair out of her face, noticing that it keeps sticking to the blood on her mouth and cheeks, and stops trying to fix it when it keeps blowing in there.

Then her lithe hands go around his neck, both of them, and she starts to squeeze.

A burned hand finds its way around her wrist and she screams, squeezing around his throat with her legs around his hips, trying to keep him pinned down with all of her body weight, just like she's thought about doing. It's as if being unmasked is some sort of on-switch, just like it'd been in the police cruiser-he quickly moves them so he's straddling her, his much stronger hand catching around her throat again.

"Michael-wait-stop-"

This time, he doesn't let up. She coughs, and coughs, and coughs, fumbling around for the knife beside her as he strangles her. Her face is blue by the time she finds the handle of the knife and she watches the way his face changes when she stabs him again.

This time, she doesn't let up, either.

The instant he lets her throat go, she keeps stabbing him, over and over again, until he's on his back in the snow with blood all around him. She straddles his waist, screaming as she stabs him in his chest and abdomen.

"Die! Die, Michael!"

She's sobbing as the knife goes in and out, and she loses count of how many times she's stabbed him as Michael pushes her hands away, futile. She thinks of her mom, of Vicky, of her grandmother-and keeps going, until she can't anymore, until she's absolutely covered in the blood that pools on his chest, his throat, all over her hands and all around them. The metal taste and smell makes her even more woozy.

Her hands cup his cheeks as he watches her, the two of them breathing hard as Michael's hand on her wrist loosens. His eyes close. She listens in close, and is only satisfied when she doesn't hear him breathing anymore, when it's eerily quiet in the space between the two of them.

Then, she falls onto her back beside him, snow falling hard as she gasps for air, their blood spreading around them in the snow that already blankets the ground, framing them as if they're angels.

Her eyes close, and the two of them lie side-by-side with one another, and she doesn't know if she conjures up the sound of him breathing to soothe her to finally black out, her grip going lax around the handle of the knife in her palm.

* * *

When Allyson awakens, the harsh smell of ammonia goes right up her nose, burning her nostrils. Her throat hurts so badly, from both the hand-shaped bruises around her throat and the tubes down her nose and in her mouth. She's numb and woozy from a morphine drip, with her leg inclined up and her arm in a cast, bandages and orange betadine smeared over her ears. She can't even breathe through her nose and can't open her left eye.

_Is this what being alive is supposed to feel like?_

She looks back up at the ceiling, and her eyes close again, hearing distant voices and the steady beeping of her heart monitor.

It's daylight when her eyes reopen, finding her grandmother asleep beside her bed. The light that pours in from the big windows burns her eyes. She blinks a few times, groaning in pain as she presses on the morphine button when she finds it.

The noise is enough to wake up Laurie, who instantly comes to her side, gingerly cupping the side of Allyson's face, where she realizes a line of stitches holds her building cheekbone together.

"Baby," Laurie says quietly, tears streaming down her face.

"Grandmother," Allyson says hoarsely, swallows back a sob that threatens to escape, and then her voice cracks when she says, "mom-"

"I know, I know," Laurie awkwardly hugs her to avoid hurting her, and Allyson wishes she could hold her. She wishes it were her mother holding her. Images of her and Michael fighting on the stairs fill her mind's eye and she doesn't think she'll ever forget the deadly crack of her neck snapping in his hands.

Quickly, Allyson pulls away, retching in the barrel beside the bed at the mere thought of that crack, remembering all of the blood in her mouth, remembering the fact that without him, she could hardly sleep-it makes her sick. Laurie's fingers push through the hair not wrapped in her head bandage, trying to soothe her. There's nothing for her to throw up but she does it anyway.

When she stops, she sets the barrel down, groaning as she lies her head back against the stiff hospital pillows, tears streaming down her cheeks that Laurie quickly wipes away.

"Hey, hey-it's okay-"

"No, it's not," Allyson whispers, sniffling, "all of my friends are dead. My mom is dead. And I-I killed him. I killed him."

There's a beat when she says that, one that Allyson doesn't quite like, but Laurie's too busy holding it together for the both of them that she doesn't even want to think about it.

"It's going to be hard, Allyson-it's going to be so hard. I wish I could say this is going to be easy for you," Laurie whispers, "but we're going to get through this, together. Of all the people in the world, I understand."

Allyson nods, her good hand coming up to cup her grandmother's cheek. She's right, at least, and she's relieved that the two of them have each other. She can only imagine how it feels for her grandmother, who lost her daughter, but she can't stop thinking of her mother, and how close they'd both been to finally having the other back.

All of the survival instincts she'd put in place with him seem to have melted away, all of the numbness gone, and she just feels vulnerable. Laurie keeps wiping the tears away as she cries, fingers pushing through her hair.

"I'm so sorry," Allyson says.

"What?"

"For-for mom, if I hadn't-if I hadn't-"

"Allyson-look at me," Allyson meets Laurie's bloodshot eyes with her own as she softly continues, "it's not your fault, okay? It's not. It's not anyone's but his. You understand that, right?"

It takes her a moment, and she knows she's lying, but she nods anyway, glad to see the smile on Laurie's face. When Laurie moves away to pick up the juicebox left on the bedside table, Allyson catches sight of all of the gift baskets and stuffed animals on the windowsill along with the heart-shaped balloons, her eyes widen.

"What's-what's all of that?"

"Presents from people all around the country. They're happy you're alive."

"So, what? I'm a celebrity victim, now?" her eyes tear up as she shakes her head, and, barely able to move, she asks scornfully, "is he?"

"Is who what?"

"Is Michael alive?"

Laurie looks out the window, her face unreadable.

"Is Michael alive, grandmother?" Allyson asks, growing frustrated as her heart monitor picks up, beeping loudly.

It's a long moment before Laurie looks back at her.

"They didn't find his body."

Allyson feels her lip quiver.

"But I killed him-I stabbed him, over and over, and I heard him stop breathing. He can't be alive!"

"They found a massive amount of his blood at the scene and a trail leading out of the yard. They're looking for him now-he couldn't have gone far, Allyson, not in that state."

Her hands cup both sides of Allyson's face.

"Nothing's ever going to happen to you ever again," she promises, "I won't let it. He won't ever get close to you again."

Allyson shakes her head, shaking off Laurie in the process.

"You can't kill him," she mutters under her breath.

"What?"

"You can't kill the boogeyman," Allyson says, her own voice sounding far away. She doesn't realize the way Laurie's eyes widen as her hands fall from her cheeks, backing away from Allyson if she's been burned. Frustrated and angry, Allyson shakes her head, wanting lash out.

"What?" Allyson snaps.

"Nothing."

_I'm in this hospital bed and I've just been kidnapped and brutalized by that fucking psychopath, and all she can think about is herself._

She bites her tongue, trying not to let the anger well up and cause her to lash out in a way she'll regret, but she's spent so long holding up her grandmother. She only wishes her grandmother could do the same in return, especially when she most needs it now.

God, she misses her mother.

She looks away from Laurie, to the window outside, sighing. They're on a lower floor of the hospital, close enough to the ground level for Allyson to see the snow, covering the ground even with the sun shining so bright. She can't wait to get out of here.

The door opens, and Sheriff Barker, another cop she doesn't recognize, and a doctor step inside, quickly shutting the door behind them to avoid the prying eyes of those in the hall.

She stares at them, and Sheriff Barker clears his throat.

"Allyson," he says, nodding in acknowledgement toward Laurie, who busies herself opening the juicebox on the bedside table. The irrational anger from moments ago starts to fade, and Allyson feels awful, meeting Laurie's gaze as she puts the straw against her lips. The juice is so cold it's frozen and feels so good going down her sore throat, but she's careful not to drink all of it.

"Hi," Allyson croaks when she's done drinking.

"Hi," Sheriff Barker smiles bleakly, gesturing to the cop beside him, "this is Sheriff Deputy Ben Meeker. He worked with your mother and with us on the case. I just would like to say we're very sorry about your loss, Allyson."

Allyson nods, meeting Meeker's gaze instead.

"I'm here to ask you some questions, Allyson," Meeker says softly, "are you up for answering them?"

She seriously considers it for a moment, then nods.

The doctor inspects her for some time before the room vacates, leaving just the two of them inside, even as Laurie initially refuses. Allyson swallows thickly, licking at her dry lips before flicking her gaze from the window outside back to Meeker.

"You can call me Ben, Allyson," Meeker-Ben says, sitting in the chair beside Allyson's bed, where Laurie's jacket still hangs from the back.

"Okay," she says softly.

"I worked with your mother to help find you. She was a very special woman. I'm sorry she's no longer with us."

"Me too," Allyson says, voice sounding strangled, avoiding his gaze.

"I wanted to ask you some questions about-what happened, you know. What happened when he took you, what happened at the Myers house. We're still waiting for the rape kit to come back-"

"Rape kit?" Allyson asks, sounding surprised, "no, he never hurt me like that. I promise."

"We just wanted to be sure. We found high amounts of Thorazine in your blood, and the fact that he kept you with him for so long-you understand."

She notices how surprised he seems at the revelation, and clears her throat, going on before he can even ask further questions, "Well-it started when this officer, Barker, picked me up. He-Michael-he killed one of my friends. That's how we met."

She feels strange saying that, feeling the tears falling again just thinking of Oscar's dead eyes staring back at her, then of Michael, "but Barker and-this doctor, they took me in a police cruiser. Then Barker ran over Michael, but-the doctor killed him. I was locked in the backseat with him-with Michael. But Michael didn't kill me, even when he had a chance to. After-after we set the house on fire, we thought he was dead. Then, Michael took me off the bed of the truck. I passed out. Then he kept me in this old house-for weeks. I tried to escape, but he caught me. Then he took me to-to this old woman's house."

Her eyes start to well up in tears, knowing she isn't quite ready to divulge the full details of her captivity just yet, deeply ashamed of whatever strange bond she'd formed with her captor to survive.

"That's when I stabbed him and we fought, and he-he took me to the Myers house."

Her lips quiver again. Ben's hand covers hers to squeeze it comfortingly, and she finds herself grateful for the gesture.

"He killed my mom-he killed her right in front of me, when she tried to stop him from attacking me," she sniffles, shaking her head.

"That's when I fought him off some more. I hid in the closet and attacked him. He put us both out of the window and then he almost strangled me to death, right there in the backyard. Even though I could barely move, I stabbed him. I don't even know how many times. But I made sure he stopped breathing."

"Jesus Christ," Ben exhales.

"That's when I passed out. He-he never hurt me like that. If anything-he was oddly merciful. He fed me, one or two times a day. Let me shower. I hurt my knee real bad-but he didn't hurt me until I tried to stab him. But I always knew-I knew he'd try to kill me, one day. And I was right," she clears her throat, looking Ben in the eyes, "what do you know about him, Ben? What happened to him?"

Concern seems etched in her tone, which worries him.

For the umpteenth time, Allyson wonders what's wrong with her.

"We found a massive pool of blood at the scene of the crime," Ben explains, "and a trail. We've issued a manhunt for him-the FBI is even helping us. We have so many tools at our disposal."

Both of his hands take hers in his, and she exhales a breath she hadn't realized she was holding, smiling for the first time in a long time. She doesn't know if she feels relieved or not, but Ben's mere presence is comforting enough.

"We're going to find him," Ben says with such conviction that she even believes it, despite knowing better, "and while we do our jobs, you have to worry about yourself, okay? You worry about healing here, doing your job. Like I told you, your mother was a very special woman. She was determined to find you-and I'll say, that inspired me, from the first time we met."

"Sounds like my mom," Allyson says, smiling sadly, finding she has no more tears left to cry.

"What I'm saying is-you're a strong young woman, Allyson. You're stronger than him. And you're not alone-you have your grandmother. You have me," Ben says, "I have two girls-Kelly, she's a sophomore at Haddonfield University, and my other girl, Deb, is a junior. Do you know them?"

"Yeah, I think Deb and I had a class or two together."

She can't fathom the idea of going back to high school-the mere thought of everything she'd been excited for just last month now makes her sick.

"They've been helping a lot, and you have my family, too."

"Thank you," Allyson says, "I-I don't know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything, sweetheart. Is there anything-anything at all I can get for you?"

"I'd just like a framed picture of my mom to have for the entire time I'm here," she says, smiling impishly, "and-I have a dumb request."

"There are no dumb requests. What can I get for you?"

"I'd just like a hot meal," she says, "no sandwiches. I'd like some soup, maybe pho, and bubble tea. Jasmine."

He chuckles, taking out his phone to send a text.

"I can have my wife or Kelly bring that to you, okay?"

She nods. He stands, heading to the door, then turns around to face her.

"I'm on your detail, so if you need anything, you give me a holler, okay?"

"Okay."

The door closes behind him. Allyson exhales a breath she hadn't realized she was holding, her eyes closing at the feel of the sun on her face, hearing Ben's voice in the hall along with the nurses, then her grandmother's. After being told to let her rest, she hears Laurie being sat outside the room. The solitude relieves her. She feels like she's been punched in the gut.

Moving her good hand up, she traces the bruises where Michael had tried to strangle her, wincing even at the gentle pressure she puts on them, and lets her hand fall down to her side. Her head hurts. Everything hurts. And she doesn't want to think of her mother anymore, so she doesn't, simply pressing on the morphine button a few more times until the door opens again and a young-looking nurse walks inside.

She gently takes Allyson's hand away from the morphine, and Allyson squints to read her nametag-Julianna.

"Be careful with that," Julianna says.

Allyson huffs, lying back against the bed, letting go of the morphine drip for now.

"I don't know if Dr. Hoffman's gone over your injuries with you," Julianna says, "but we're going to have to schedule you for a knee replacement. We also have to schedule reconstructive surgery on your arm. You had a compound fracture."

"A knee replacement?"

"Your ACL was completely severed, and it almost totally destroyed the cartilage, along with fractures. It's better if we replace your entire knee."

She sighs.

"Okay. So I guess this means I'm trapped here even longer than I thought."

"Hey, don't pout. You'll have us to help you. And you're not trapped. Seeing as how you turn eighteen in four days, you have a few choices to make."

Allyson frowns. Turning eighteen without her mother there, it seems unreal-she genuinely doesn't know if she can do it, but knows her mother would be furious at her if she just gives up after all of this.

"Like what?"

"We've been looking at a few assisted living facilities for you to make your recovery after surgery-"

"Assisted living?" Allyson baulks, "like-a nursing home?"

"-a rehabilitation center," Julianna interjects, "a secure place for you to heal, physically and emotionally too, until you go back home."

"I'm not made of glass. I can take care of myself."

"There's no harm in needing help, Allyson," Julianna says firmly, "after what you've been through? You're a strong girl. But you don't need to be made of diamond, either. You're tough, but let us take care of you, okay?"

Allyson hesitates, then nods, giving in. Giving in like this doesn't make her feel so bad.

Julianna seems happy with that. She takes Allyson's vitals, then pulls back.

"I'm surprised you're up and alert so soon," she confesses, "we thought you'd be in a coma for much longer, at the very least, with how hurt you are."

"What's today's date?" she asks.

"December sixth."

It really is only a few days until her birthday, which falls on the ninth.

"It's been-"

"Two weeks. You've needed all the rest you could get."

"And he's still out there," she feels sick again, but has nothing left in her to retch up.

"What?"

She shakes her head, eyes pricking with tears once more.

"Can I just-have a few minutes alone, please?"

Julianna nods obligingly, leaving the room, as Allyson lies back against her pillows, eyes squinting closed as she tries to will herself to remember anything after she'd stabbed him, but she can't find anything. The idea that he'd simply just disappeared makes her blood turn to ice-it's as if he's not even human. But she'd already known that, hadn't she?

She drifts off to sleep like that, for a long, long time, before anyone can ask her any more questions for the time being.

* * *

The knee replacement surgery goes on without a hitch, along with her arm surgery. Overall, it's two weeks before Allyson's discharged from the hospital, just in time for Christmas.

Eighteen now, Allyson picks out a rehabilitation center twenty miles outside of Haddonfield, with Ben and Kelly's help. With their help, she finds an attorney, and files a lawsuit against Smith's Grove and Warren County for Dr. Sartain's actions, joined by Frank Hawkins' wife and daughter. It looms over her head but she tries to ignore it.

She has a lot of decisions to make. She knows that, and she knows the weight of them all too well. But, as she waits out the weird space between Christmas and the New Year, she tries to let some of them go.

The media attention is unbearable. She wishes she'd been more empathetic to Laurie's plight, even if tensions between her and her grandmother are sometimes at an all-time high. She can't help herself. She's so angry, and for seemingly no reason. The morphine helped, and so do the pain pills, but she knows she can't lean on those things for too long.

They celebrate Christmas Eve at the rehabilitation facility, where Allyson has her own bedroom. It's a small place, but inconspicuous, away from prying eyes, and run by friends of Ben's family. They celebrate in her bedroom, where Laurie gifts Allyson with a sweater and a necklace with her mother's birthstone-an emerald.

Allyson hugs Laurie tightly with her one good arm, the other adorned in a sling.

"Thank you," she says softly, "I needed this. I know things have been-rough. And I'm sorry, grandmother. I'm sorry. It's just-it's so hard."

"I understand," she says, rubbing Allyson's back. Allyson's stitches are mostly out, leaving just scars and yellowed bruises behind, with the worst of her injuries being her knee and arm, but she can't be too careful.

"I know," Allyson says, pulling back with a smile, then reaching over for a gift on the table to hand to Laurie, wincing in pain as her injuries seem to be pulled taut.

"You understand me more than anyone, grandmother," she says as Laurie unwraps it, finding a framed picture of Allyson, Karen, and her. It's Laurie's turn to cry now. Laurie's cried far more than Allyson's ever seen her to in her life, open and easy. It's refreshing. In the uncertainty of her life after escaping from Michael Myers, she knows she has her grandmother.

Laurie hugs onto her in return as she looks down at the picture, sniffling.

"I appreciate this more than I can say," Laurie says.

"I'm glad. It was hard picking out a gift for you," Allyson says with a laugh, holding up the necklace. "Can you put this on me?"

Laurie does so, and Allyson's glad to wear both necklaces-her mother's birthstone, and the pendant necklace Vicky had gifted her last year. Then she sits back in her chair, pouring more sparkling apple juice.

"I'm proud of you, Allyson," Laurie says, "I really am."

"Thank you," Allyson says with a smile. "I'm proud of you, too. No matter what, I'll always have you, and I'm grateful for that."

Laurie cuts another piece of cheesecake for herself, offering Allyson a slice. She shakes her head, not having much appetite for anything besides light meals the past few weeks, mostly whatever pho Kelly brings by when she comes with Ben and his wife, Doreen. Deb comes by less often, busy with finals.

"I-I have a question for you," Allyson asks tentatively.

"What is it?"

"One day-not soon, but one day-can you show me how to use a gun?"

Laurie blinks in surprise.

"Allyson-"

"You don't have to answer me now. You can think about it. I just-think it'd be good."

Laurie purses her lips but, thankfully, doesn't ask anymore questions. They both know why Allyson asks. Her therapist could drill it into her head that Michael Myers is most likely dead, but in her head, he's not. His body hadn't been found. The two of them know better.

"Okay. I'll think about it. But not-not for a long time, okay? You need to focus on recovering first, then we'll see."

"Okay."

Laurie pointedly doesn't look at Allyson, and part of Allyson can't help but wonder if this is partly some sort of guilt, on Laurie's part-for passing down whatever curse the two of them share because of the same man. Laurie's wounds still are so fresh, and Allyson knows hers are deeper. She can't even imagine herself a week from now, let alone in forty years.

She sighs, taking a sip of her apple juice, and listens to the Christmas music reverberate from the other rooms down the facility's halls. When she looks outside the big window beside them, she sees the full moon, big and bright.

It makes her smile.

* * *

Somewhere out there, closer than you'd think, a Shape watches that very same moon, a bracelet glinting brightly in his hand as a finger traces over her initials engraved along the inside.

He waits for her, just as she waits for him.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments are always appreciated!


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